


The Mermaid Process

by Unclemeg



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Angst and Drama, F/M, Family Feels, Humor, M/M, Multi, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:33:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 24
Words: 53,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23988940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unclemeg/pseuds/Unclemeg
Summary: Ariel goes to Severus Snape about getting some legs so she can make the move to land in the magical world. Only her move isn't going to be smooth sailing when she discovers the boy from the cave she befriended sixty years ago grew up into Lord Voldemort. Eventual Drarry. Half-Blood Prince AU.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter One

Author's Note: Okay so 6 years ago I wrote an Ariel/ Snape fanfic that was so bad that when I reread it this year I vowed to not only delete that shit out of existence but rewrite the whole thing because frankly Movie Snape and Post-The-Little-Mermaid Ariel are my OTP and they deserve a better story.

Chapter One: Miserably Me

It was twenty minutes after midnight and already a shit day for Snape. Then again, it was just another shit day in a shit year amongst a shitty lifetime.

Insomnia came yet again and he did what he usually did to combat that terrible beast: masturbated, and when that failed, he went on a long stroll.

Hogwarts, despites its beauty at nights, felt more like a catacomb lately. A catacomb that rarely offered peace of sleep but instead waves after wave of disappointment, miseries and some of the dumbest young people on the face of the Earth.

He thought the way most people who chase a dream believe, that his ascent from Potion's Masters to his dream of being a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor would solve everything. He thought it meant he would finally be happy and that happiness would cure everything else—the depression, the self-loathing, insomnia. He dared to think that accomplishing his life-long goal would turn everything else in his life around but sadly, he discovered less than a week after the school year started, that his stupid brain didn't care if he had the dream job or that he wasn't in Azkaban or homeless. It didn't care that he was the youngest potion's masters of the school's history or that he had earned Dumbledore's trust or that he had several talents and skills acquired through a lifetime of studying and discipline. It was why, on this day, twenty minutes after midnight, that Snape finally had the epiphany that just because you land the dream job, get the dream salary, get the coveted office (away from the dungeons and the draft and the muffled but undrownable sounds of his horny students' squeaky beds from above)—none of that meant anything if he still had to deal with himself. Even a prick like Snape could recognize just how much of prick he was which only served to make him pray for Death to come already and snuff out his rotten waste of a life.

Only then, he thought to himself bitterly as he made his way alongside the breezy lakeside of Hogwarts, will I finally be—

But his internal monologue was interrupted by the sound of music.

He thought it was a songbird at first, some lonely creature calling out for its mate or to its family until he stopped walking long enough to listen. As he stood there, the singing grew louder and more lovely and recognizably human. The moment he realized it was a woman's voice singing did his black-shoed feet carry him towards the heavenly noise, further along, the perimeter of the lake. He hit a bank of tall reeds and pussy-willows before a nagging voice in his head warned him, you know there is only one creature who can lure people to the waters with such a sound. And they're always waiting for men like you to—

I don't care, said a second voice as he combed through the tall reeds, his feet treading on squishy mud as he pulled himself closer to the body of water. Let it be the last thing I ever hear.

It was then, under a half-moon's light, that he found the source of the singing. There, on the edge of the lake, sat a siren with her tail still in the water as it gently swished back and forth against the surface. She had her back to him so all he saw, in the brief seconds before she turned around to acknowledge him, was the long drape of red hair flowing from her head. She played with a lock of it, twisting it between her fingers, as she serenaded the moon which gleamed down on her appreciatively.

For a moment, he stood there, listening, his mind blank of all thought, his face slack from enchantment as he indulged himself with her singing.

Then she turned around and revealed the loveliest face and the prettiest smile which she delivered onto him, welcomingly. His face went cold with fear.

"Hello," she said her voice so smooth and sweet one would have believed she was made entirely of whipped cream.

"Hello." He greeted half dazed. Then he cleared his throat. "I don't know if you realize this…um—"

"Ariel."

"Ariel." It came out of him like a summer breeze. She gave him a small smile when it passed his lips and he had to avert his gaze to the top of her head, so that he wouldn't get tongue-tied looking into her eyes, to tell her, "But you are on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry property. And as a teacher here, I must inform you that for the safety of our students, anybody that isn't authorized to be on school property, must leave. So…please leave."

He punctuated the speech with a small plea because he found himself unhinged under her warm smile and her big blue eyes which he feared would undo him entirely if he were to spend another second being looked at by her.

"You're a teacher here?" She asked, lifting herself then turning her body to face him so that only the tip of her tail remained in the lake.

"I am."

"Which subject?"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts."

She looked to the ground and said, "shit." She turned to her right and began rummaging through a red cloth bag which was teeming with magazines. "I was hoping you were the man I was looking for."

Yet another woman disappointed in me for being something I'm not, he thought sadly as he watched her pull out a waterlogged copy of 'POTIONS HEADS MONTHLY' and begin flipping through the pages.

"Y-you scribe to Potions Heads Monthly?" He asked.

"It's my favorite magazine." She explained off-handedly as she kept flipping through the pages trying to find what she was looking for. Then she paused her perusing long enough to lift her head and tell him excitedly, "I even got to contribute to one of their issues." She let out a giddy squeal, adding, "I still can't believe they published one of my potions."

"Which one was yours?" He asked, impressed for it was no small feat to get a recipe published in that magazine (he must have submitted fifty times before they accepted any of his ideas).

"It was in the August issue. It was the 'Voice Disgusting Potion'."

"Oh yes! I remember Two tablespoons of sperm whale sperm mixed with the phlegm of a Finfolk—"

"One strand of hair from you and whoever you're trying to sound like—" Ariel went on.

"Boil for an hour, stir regularly until it turns blue and add a pinch of cinnamon for taste!" They recounted simultaneously before they burst into laughter.

"Yes, I remember that potion!" Snape said as a rare smile loosened from his thin lips. "Well, this is a treat. I've never met a fan of that publication in person before."

"Well, I got an even bigger treat for you," Ariel said. "Because I happen to know for a fact that one of this magazine's editors works with you."

"Who?" Snape asked confused.

"Professor…" She started slowly as she read from the magazine. "Serve-us Snap?"

"Severus Snape." He corrected with a charmed smile of a man who experienced serendipity for the first time in his life.

"Yes, him. Now I know you're only trying to do your job and I respect that, I do, but if I could just speak to this man for a few minutes…" Ariel started but her sentence trailed off as she watched the strange man lowered himself to his knees until his black eyes and her blue eyes were at the same level.

"Hello." He said.

"Hello?"

He held out his hand for her. "My name's Severus Snape."

"I'm Ariel no last name because mermaids don't have last names." She said, her eyebrow quirked with suspicion even as she slid her hand into his and gave it a cursory shake. "I thought you said you taught defense against the whatever arts."

"I do. But up until last week, I was, in fact, Severus Snape, Potions Master and guest editor/ contributor to Potions Heads Monthly."

"Why don't you teach potions anymore?"

"I was promoted."

"Oh." It came out in a soft breath of a moan. Then she gave him an intrigued smile that could have chipped an iceberg. "A man of more than one passion, I see."

"More like a man of few interests outside the stony walls of academia." He scoffed, slightly embarrassed by her generous smiles. "Um, so, you swam all night just to see me?"

"I did." She scooted closer to him. He tensed, afraid that the closer she would get, the closer he would be to coming undone but didn't move away. "It seems me and you have a couple of things in common."

"Oh?"

"Yes. We're both potions geeks. We're both for the criminalization of the Amoretia and the legalization of the abortion potion." Ariel said. "It makes no sense why the ministry is okay with teaching witches how to make a date-rape potion but throws a conniption any time you try to teach young people how to create their birth control."

"It's mind-numbingly asinine." He agreed.

"And, as it turns out, we are both of the same minds," She continued dropping an open issue onto his lap with the pages flipped to an article that he wrote titled, 'The Exorbitant Cost of Unhappiness: How The Potions Industry Profits From Lack of Mental Health Resources in the Magical Community', "That mental health potions should be low cost and free to all."

He read the headline and felt a wave of pride he hadn't felt in a long-time wave over him. Written however many months ago, when he was back at Spinner's End and he was thinking of his mother and how her depression had robbed her of life and how she spent all those years chugging elixirs, hoping it would undo what years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father and grandfather when she needed much more. He wrote it in a night and submitted it when he was day-tipsy and had nearly forgotten about its existence until now.

"I forgot about this article." He said, his voice barely louder than a whisper as emotion bubbled up from within. He lifted his head and found her eyes on him. The mere flicker of her eyelashes sent his butterflies into his stomach and blood to his dick and he had to push away thoughts of her moaning his name as he cleared his throat and said, in his normal voice, "I'm glad my words positively resonated with you."

"I'm glad too because once I read that article I was hooked—pun intended—on all your articles. Any time I saw your name was in the table of contents, I'd read yours first. I don't know if you remember this but I wrote a letter to the editor about your last article." Ariel quickly tore through her tote bag until she found the issue, she needed which was bookmarked and flipped open to yet another article of his immediately. She pointed past the article to a little segment titled Letters to the Editor where A from Ocean City, UK wrote: 'In regards to Traumatic Limbs Regeneration in Non-Wizarding Folks, is it feasible for a those of the aquatic magical community, ie mermaids sirens finfolks, etc, who lost her lower half to regenerate human legs? If so, do you think they would the procedure survive and do you think it be astronomically expensive?' Snape's reply followed: 'Yes. It would be expensive and time-consuming but I think any competent potionteer would be able to pull off restoring human legs on any species.'

Ariel waited for him to read her letter to the editor and from him to realize why she swam all this way to see someone like him. His head lifted to find her hopeful eyes pinned to him.

"Do you still think it's possible, Professor Severus?"

His heart froze then burned at the use of his name which rolled over of her tongue effortlessly.

"I do." He said in a measured tone. "But, if I might ask, why are you asking me such a thing?"

He gestured to her in-tact tail. She glanced at it her eyelids heavy the moment they landed on scaly appendage which curled towards them, away from the water, the paper-thin webbing of her dorsal fin shimmered against the pale moonlight. She turned herself until all of herself was out of the water and her tail hovered before Snape.

"You can touch it if you want." She said sadly, noticing the unmistakable awe in his eyes.

Snape glanced at her uncertainly but then a voice in his head told him when are you ever going to get this close to a siren again and his hand shot out to her tail. As he ran it up and down a small patch of scales, he was dismayed by how rough and cold the tail felt against his palm. It reminded him of a wet brick wall.

"Wow," he breathed out in amazement eyes locked on her tail.

"Yeah. Wow." She said sarcastically as she let her tail rest in the patch of unclaimed earth. Her eyes were narrowed and her posture was hunched as she continued, "I hate that tail more than I hate my enemies combined. And I have a lot of those."

"Another thing we have in common," he murmured. "I meant about having a lot of enemies, not about having a tail. Obviously."

"Obviously." She whispered back absentmindedly as her hands rifled through her long bright red hair with new nervous energy. "Sorry. I didn't mean. I can be a sarcastic asshole sometimes."

Snape smirked. "Likewise."

Ariel let out a dejected sigh then told him, her voice rife with emotion, "I can't stand looking at it." She punctuated her sentence by punching her tail. "Every day, it mocks me. Every day, I beg and plea and pray that one day I'll wake up and it'll be gone. Just so I can go out and make my limb regeneration potion, get some legs, live on land, be apart of this magical world at last. And every day, I wake up heartbroken because it's still there. And I'm still…"

"Trapped?"

She nodded; her pinkened face bowed into her hands as a rush of tears came over her. Snape dropped his gaze, wanting to comfort her but too awkward to do anything. Thankfully Ariel regained her composure within seconds and was able to squeegee her tears with her fingers before she continued, in-between sniffles, "That's why I came here. I was hoping you could surgically remove my tail and feed me limb regeneration potion." She went into her bag again and pulled out, to his dismay, a sparkling pearl-and-sapphire encrusted tiara from her modest bag and extended the treasure to him. "I'm willing to pay you handsomely."

Snape took the crown and studied it. It felt real enough and everything about the crown, from its intricate design to the loud rippling waves captured in the center-most sapphire of the crown, told him it had to belong to mermaid royalty.

"Last time I got it appraised they told me it is priceless but you could easily sell it to the Museum of Magical History and get two hundred million for it."

"Where did you get it?" Snape asked.

"It's mine." She replied. When Snape gave her a disbelieving look, she reiterated. "It is! Look I can prove it." She took the crown back and set it on her head where the moment it rested against her forehead a Jamaican accented voice projected from the center-most sapphire.

"This tiara belongs to Princess Ariel, the seventh daughter of King Triton and Queen Athena. So, don't even think about it stealing this, bumboclaats!"

Ariel pointed at her crown which shot out little balls of confetti and light while steel drums rang out a cheerful tune. "See?"

Snape knelt there in silence barely able to conceal his shock. "You're a princess?"

"I was a princess." Ariel corrected, taking the crown from her head. "But then I turned sixteen and I was so desperate to be a human that I sold my soul, got married to the first guy I met, was promptly cheated on by said man—"

"Ooh."

"Oh, it gets worst. We were still on the boat to go on our honeymoon when I found him in bed with another. So, I murdered him in a jealous rage, wrecked the boat, went back home, got disowned for leaving the ocean and spent the last couple decades just drifting around being depressed and taking up potions in my spare time." Ariel explained. "So, yeah. I'm nothing now. Just a depressed asshole hoping against hope that maybe someone can help me hate myself a little less."

A silence drifted between them. Their eyes veering away from the other, too embarrassed by their impotence and self-loathing to be able to offer assurances. Until, Snape broke the quiet by asking, "Do you want to be a human?"

Ariel looked at him, her eyes moving slowly over his impassive face before she settled on a reply, "More than anything."

"May I ask, why?"

Ariel chuckled. "Have you lived under the sea? It fucking sucks. It's cold. I'm never warm. You're always getting chased by something that wants to eat you or fuck you or just plain kill you. You have no idea how easy it is to accidentally swim into a predator's mouth. And—it's never been home to me. I never felt at home when I was in the ocean. Even when I was with my family. But those few days I spent on land…those was the happiest days of my life. I felt like—like myself when I was on land. And I would give anything just to be happy with myself like that again. Even for a second."

She dropped her gaze to her tail, which twitched mindlessly in the mud, then raised it back to Snape who had slipped into a silence she couldn't read.

"So, will you help me?"

Snape looked at her tail then looked her in the eye and said slowly, "I'm afraid to say I don't think potions can fix this problem for you. Frankly, even with your wealth, it would be very time-consuming to create one potion let alone create enough potions to sustain you for the rest of your life."

Ariel sighed, disappointed but unsurprised. "Well, thanks for your honesty, Professor Severus." She started to turn, to dive back into the lake and swim away when Snape's hand tapped her lightly on the upper arm.

"I do think however that a powerful enough Glamour Charm would suffice in giving you legs."

Ariel stared at him, overcome by a multitude of emotions. "Really?" She choked out.

"Yes."

"H-how fast can you…?"

"Tonight, right now." He said wand in hand knees plunged into the mud. He was about to reach into his pocket for his wand when a thought crossed his mind and he stopped himself to unbutton his cloak and laid the cloth down on the wet ground. He gestured for Ariel to lie on it which she did and then he took his wand out and said, "Okay. I must warn you this is going to sting for a bit."

Ariel laughed. "You're sweet but I lost my virginity to a swordfish. Trust me, nothing hurts me."

Snape's lips twitched upward before he held out both hands, hovered them above her tail as his mind locked and eyes locked onto the task in hand and began to recite words from a dead language.

Pain exploded within her like a grenade as her tail uncurled and stiffened. A yellowish glow surrounded her as the sound of something being ripped tore through the air. She gnashed her teeth while agony sluiced through her bones. Wind from the Forbidden Forest roared as Snape continued to mutter out the words he needed for the spell, his unblinking eyes never leaving the tail which slowly split down her middle and eventually—with a horrible RIP—separated into two.

Ariel clawed at the dirt underneath her as she held back the visceral urge to screech at the heavens. Her body pulsated with fresh agony while the two halves of her tail contorted, turning from dark green into a fleshy white, the scales the gills disappearing and transforming into new muscles and fat.

The searing pain was replaced with a burning pain which was replaced by a dull pain and eventually was replaced by the relieving absence of pain. She picked up her woozy, sweat-covered head to find Snape staring at her lower half, looking mesmerized. She lifted herself onto her elbows and when she looked down to see the dreadful tail was gone, replaced by two bare legs, she sobbed from joy.


	2. Chapter Two

AUTHOR'S NOTE: MAD SEX SCENES AHEAD

Chapter Two: Sleepless Night Part One

For a while all Ariel did when she got her legs was stroke them, her hands running up and down the contours of her new limbs, her teary-eyes unblinking as if the moment she looked away they would disappear on her again. She remained on the ground, on Snape's cloak, who took a seat beside her but kept his eyes away from her.

Her beauty made his stomach stir but her nakedness burned him to the core. He had to keep his eyes on the placid lake or else he would embarrass himself, and her, with an erection even he couldn't control.

After a while, once the shock wore down, did Ariel push herself from the ground, her knees wobbling as she struggled for balance and straighten her back. Once her knees were still and she looked down at her own feet, her toes wiggling against the soft, damp fabric, did she smile. And from that smile came an explosion of joy.

She galloped away from the lake, screaming.

Snape watched her leap, dash, sprint, twirl, run in circles, attempt a cartwheel, fall to the ground laughing, get back up, and dance badly. He couldn't help but take pride in her unbridled joy.

Ariel's overjoyed screams, her cheers, her yelps of triumph filled the air and landed on his ears like beautiful notes he wished he could play on loop for the rest of his life.

Look at you, a voice in his head said. A piece of shit like you actually did something decent for once.

He smiled to himself. He knew this feeling wouldn't last long but he dared himself to believe that he deserved to feel this happiness. And when another voice in his head tried to remind him, no this feeling is unearned you're still an awful human being, for once he was able to point to a good deed and say, but I did one good thing today and that better mean I am better than I was yesterday.

"I have legs!" Ariel proclaimed happily as she skipped back over to Snape. "I have legs! I have legs! My tail is gone and I have legs!" She stamped the ground beside him with her feet as she came to a halt. He strained his head to circumvent her breasts and find her face which he noticed was brightened with a new thought. "Holy shit. I wonder if I can…" She looked down at Snape and told him to plug his ears which he did then she tilted her head back to the sky, unhinged her jaw, and unleashed an earth-juddering roar. One would have thought a massive tornado had arrived out of nowhere from the way the wind and the sky shook. Snape fell to his side, his hands pressed violently against his ears. Then, in a snap, the horrible noise was gone and Ariel was laughing again. "Ha! Yes! Still got it. This is better than I could've hoped. Not only do I have legs again but I get to keep my voice too." She dropped to her knees and when she leaned forward so that their eyes were once again at the same level, they were so close their noses almost touched. "Thank you so much."

Snape's throat went dry. He forced his gaze to her beautiful face, feeling his pants grow tighter the harder he fought to keep his eyes from diverting down to the rest of her body. "You're truly welcome." He murmured.

Her nose crinkled and another smile unfurled out for him. Their lips were so close. His groin ached at the thought of her kisses. Her salty kisses trailing his body. Their bodies colliding. Her luscious voice saying his name over and over while he—

"Can I ask you something?"

"Of course." He said.

"You're not part siren by any chance? Like, maybe on your mom's side or something?"

He chuckled, relieved for the distraction. "I doubt it." Though the more he thought about it, the less he was sure. His mom never talked about her parents and when she did it was to point out his grandfather's bastard-ways and how it was the "family curse": for the women in their family to fall in love with bastards and for the men to grow up into bastards. "Although, I can't say for sure."

Ariel grinned but her eyes drifted down to his mouth and the smile faded at the corners. "You know what the first thing I thought when I heard you say my name?"

"What?" He breathed.

"I thought, 'wow. What a gorgeous voice. He could drown a lot of people with that voice'."

It was the nicest compliment someone had ever given him, outside of his accomplishments. And the best part, it was sincere.

"I can honestly say," Snape smiled, "That's the nicest compliment I've ever gotten."

Ariel plunged forward. Her mouth landed on his softly but quickly their soft kisses got rougher, hungrier, more insatiable. Soon, they were all hands, groping, touching, clutching at another, their bodies pressed so hard into each other they looked like two halves of cells trying to fuse together, all gasps and moans and empty of thought. Ariel straddled his waist and rubbed her unclothed mound into his covered erection and they moaned loudly with anticipation.

"Can I tell you something?" She panted out after a few minutes of blissful dry humping.

"Might as well." He panted with a laugh. "You already told me you killed your husband and sold your soul."

"It wasn't my soul. It was my voice. And I got it back," she replied sweetly. "But you asked me why I wanted to leave the ocean so bad and I told you a bunch of reasons but the biggest reason was—fish sex is awful. There's no pleasure for the female. It's literally a male fish sperms on some eggs and that's it. No touching, no kissing, no getting your genitals licked until you can't see. And," she thrust her pelvis into his and they both were gasping, hard, their desires aflame. "God, I missed that. I missed getting fucked."

Snape arched his back and dug his erection into her. She kept hold, her fingers looped around his waistband as her head tilted back as another gasp rushed out of her. The idea of there being a white stain on the front of his pants from her pleasure burned him wildly and he rolled himself on top of her, showered her neck with kisses, her moans filling his ears with ecstasy. He might have burst then and there but he set his mind against it and paused from his kissing to whisper in her ear, "If you can wait my dear until we get to my office, so that I may fuck you properly on a bed, I promise you, Miss. Ariel I will do my absolute best to ravage you thoroughly."

"Oh, God." She moaned. "Say my name again."

"Ariel."

"Oh, Severus." She cried before their mouths reconnected and they rolled on the ground together until the desire was too strong for her and she broke apart, her voice husky voice begged, "Where the hell's this office?"

They rolled off each other, got up from the dirtied cloak which Snape cleaned with a flick of his wand and handed over to Ariel. She took the cloak and gave him a wicked smile as she wrapped herself within the cloth and secured it above her chest with a simple knot. "This is so warm!" She observed with a shudder. "You might not get this back."

"You could take everything from me and I wouldn't care in the slightest." He replied with a breathless quality that made her heart melt.

She gave him another charming smile, held out her hand for him to take, which he did without hesitation, and the two of them started towards the castle, giddy with horniness.

Stepping through those giant self-opening double doors for the first-time gobsmacked everyone but when Ariel took those first steps down the dimly light halls, her jaw hit the floor.

"Wow…" She gaped as her head swirled around to observe it all the beauty from the glorious architecture to the luscious tapestries to the moving staircases to the hidden passageways that Snape lead them through to the ghosts passed by them with disinterest to the paintings who yelled at Snape for the light emanating from his wand 'ruining their beauty sleep'. "This place is beautiful. Almost makes Atlantis look like a crackhouse."

"You've seen Atlantis?" Snape asked. "My God, how old are you?"

"I'll be two hundred years old on the spring equinox." Ariel gave him a sparkling grin. "Why? You're only into young girls, professor?"

"On the contrary, I prefer grown women," Snape replied with a lecherous smile. "Although I am relieved to know I'm not robbing any cradles."

"How old are you?"

"I'll be thirty-seven in January."

"Aww! You're still a baby." She crooned, pinching the side of his face affectionately.

Snape pushed her hand away playfully then drew in to deliver a passionate kiss. They stood there, holding each other tenderly for a few heartbeats until Snape pulled away, used his head to gesture towards the door they stood in front of, and whispered, "This is it."

He stepped aside to open the door with his wand and allow Ariel's first entry. She grinned at him, excitedly, when she passed by.

The room was small, smaller than she expected. His walls were lined with books and jars filled with slimy things while a giant bed dressed in black satin blankets sat, almost expectedly, in the middle of the room while a cauldron simmered quietly in the corner beside a dark wooden desk and a dark gray curtained windowed silhouetted the half-moon which appeared to stand in the window for their pleasure alone.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "I thought you didn't teach potions anymore."

"These aren't for teaching. These are for me." He replied as he slowly stepped towards her.

Ariel chuckled under her breath as she took a few steps to meet him. "Nerd." She whispered coyly.

That whisper—her lips—the look in her eyes. He flung himself into her and buried his mouth into her while they tore at each other's clothes. He unknotted his own cloak while she unhooked his belt and unzipped his erection free, which hovered straight out. Hard as diamond and as long as a loaf of bread.

The cloak fell from her and she was once again naked. She fell backward onto the bed but he crouched before the edge. She almost begged him to join her until he saw his lips part and his head lean towards her genitals.

He tongued her folds, pressing it flat and swerving it in between her lips and against her clit furiously. Her insides vibrated with delight as he continued to lick her thoroughly. She whimpered, her hands rushing to the top of his head, signaling to him to get as close as he could. He grabbed her by the thighs and pulled her closer to him until she felt the bridge of his nose furrow her mound while his tongue swished, circled, and kneaded her.

"Oh, professor." She gasped happily. Pleasure and bliss swam over her and she wanted him to know that he was doing great. "Oh, Severus."

He lifted his head and begged, "Say my name again."

She obliged, her voice getting louder, huskier, and more desperate for his skillful touch. His tongue ran back and forth over her clit, faster and faster, the louder she screamed his name. Soon the whole room was filled with the sounds and smell of her pleasure. He wouldn't stop. Not until he was sure she had enjoyed herself thoroughly.

Within minutes, she felt it. That rapturous climb. She arched her back, squeezed her thighs against his head, and yelled, "YES! SEVERUS! YES! I'M COMING!" He unhinged his jaw to gobble as much of her as he could while she finally burst. It was magnificent. Her first orgasms in literal decades and it was just as wonderful as she remembered.

She wanted more.

She gently touched Snape on the forehead, who dutifully continued to lap up her throbbing genitals, and when he stopped to see what she needed, she said with a pant, "Please fuck me."

He jumped to his feet, threw off his pants, then the rest of his clothes, watching her hungrily as she fondled herself until, at last, he was as naked as she and slid into space beside her. They kissed, their bodies thumping against the other while their hands trailed underneath the blankets. Ariel grabbed him and gently brushed the tip of his penis against her vagina, holding his aching stares while she rubbed against his member and moaned at the ecstasy. Snape, unable to stand his desires, pushed himself into her hot, wet, velvety splendor with ease.

From there, they started fucking. Snape made powerful, intense thrusts while Ariel clung to him like a horny tree frog, her legs wrapped around his waist tight, and her hands clasped around his neck her face slack from pleasure.

They did this position for several minutes without talking, overcome with intense desire neither one of them had felt in years. Then Ariel pushed him over, flipping him onto his back and climbed on top.

"Oh Ariel," he moaned watching her slid his penis back into her vagina without an instance of discomfort. "God, you're so wet."

"I think this is the wettest I've ever been, out of the ocean." She breathed before she straddled his hips and started riding him.

Even as he laid there and watch the woman of his dreams bounce on top of his cock until her eyes rolled in the back of her eyes and her melodic voice cried out his name, Snape couldn't believe this was real.

This has to be a dream, he told himself later, after they switched to three other positions before ultimately, he came so hard he saw stars and collapsed, a sweaty panting heap of flesh and spent pleasure, beside this beautiful creature. How can this be real? He asked himself as he turned his head and watched Ariel's profile deliver a big dumb smile to the ceiling.

She turned her head to meet his gaze and as if reading his thoughts told him, "This must be a dream come true for you." When he was too dumbstruck to reply with anything other than a smile, she giggled and turned her eyes back to the ceiling. "You have bragging rights for life, professor. A lot of men would kill to be able to say they fucked a mermaid."

At first, he was charmed by her words. But then he watched the smile fade from her mouth and a hint of sadness settle onto her eyes. "Hell, that's the only reason my ex married me."

"Well, I didn't fuck a mermaid," Snape replied with slow deliberation. "I fucked a potions geek named Ariel No Last Name."

Ariel goose-honked when she laughed, holding her hand to her face with slight embarrassment as she kept on laughing and she looked so beautiful in that moment. He almost proposed to her then and there. When she looked back at him, she gave him a closed-lip smile of utter adoration. She then caressed the side of his face and breathed, "You're too sweet." Snape held her hand against his cheek and they laid there like that for a few heartbeats in content silence.

"You probably have class soon." She whispered eventually.

"Not for a few hours." He whispered back. "Though we should probably go to bed. I'm sure you have a lot of things you want to do with your new life."

Ariel gave him a small, slightly sad smile as she took her hand from his face and began to turn on her side. "Goodnight, Professor Severus."

"Goodnight, Miss. Ariel."


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three: Sleepless Night Part Two

Draco secretly believed the dark mark sucked the ability to sleep out of you. Since he joined the Dark Lord's ranks, sleep eluded him.

At first, he didn't mind. It was summer anyway when it started. And he enjoyed the long nights alone to enjoy the silence of his house. He found them tranquil. Besides, nobody cared when he slept the mornings away. His mother had too much on her mind anyway. He supposed he'd be a wreck too if the love of his life was wallowing away in a blackhole while she lived with the worry that he'll die before she'll ever see him again. In her defense, she did try to keep a brave face for him while he was home. But that wasn't to say she didn't try to talk to him about what was going on. Though, she couldn't offer him assurances. To her credit, she was never a mother who sugarcoated things for him. She told him things he already knew. Like how they had to be extra careful now. How things were going to be bad, for a while, before they'll ever start to look good.

If they were ever going to be in the Dark Lord's good graces again, he would have to prove himself able to make up for his father's shortcomings. He would have to be a good spy. He would have to prove himself craftier, smarter than his father. He had to be the perfect, clever, stoic servant. Like his godfather.

He hadn't slept more than two hours continuously since he got back to Hogwarts. Every time he managed to fall asleep the Dark Lord's voice would slither into his dreams, reminding him with flashes of his father's misery, what would happen to his entire family should he fail.

But how could he plot when his eyes couldn't bare the garish sunlight coming through his classroom's windows? How was his supposed to think of a plan to fulfill his order when his head felt like it was filled with mud? He couldn't bare it. He needed sleep. He needed rest, desperately. And that's why he found himself, half-dead, in front of Snape's office door his limbs so heavy from exhaustion he could barely bring himself to knock.

"Uncle Sev." He called his woozy head pressed against the coolness of the wooden door. No sound signaled life. He knocked again, harder. "Uncle Sev! Open up before I pass out."

He was relieved to heard movement on the other side of the door. He was so sleep-deprived he barely stirred when he heard a distinctly feminine voice ask, "Who's that?"

"Shit," Snape hissed as he threw his pants back on.

"Who's that?" Ariel asked as she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and picked his cloak from the ground.

"One of my students." Snape replied. When he buckled his belt, he took his wand out and performed a silencing spell over the room to spare himself from his godson's nosy tendencies.

"Your students call you Uncle Sev?" She asked with amusement.

"Just the pain in the ass ones," he said, buttoning his shirt back on. He then glanced over to watch Ariel wrap herself with his cloak. Sentimentality swam over him as he confessed, "Last night was…phenomenal."

Ariel giggled. "I agree."

They shared a devious smile as they continued to hurriedly dress themselves.

"So, what are your big plans for your first day on land?" Snape inquired.

"First, I'm going to get some clothes. Know anywhere good?"

"Diagon Alley has plenty of places."

"Perfect. After that, I don't know. I guess look up some old friends." She gave him a sly look when she added, "Possibly go on a date with this young, golden throated professor I just met. If he ever gets around to telling me his schedule."

Snape let out a breathy, slightly embarrassed but deeply flattered laugh. He felt his infatuation for her double in that instant. "Tomorrow? After six? We can get dinner at the Bearded Unicorn."

Ariel beamed. "Sounds perfect."

They stepped towards another to kiss but another heavy-handed knock interrupted them.

"Little shit," Snape muttered.

Ariel chuckled, then pecked his nose. "Got any floo powder?" She took the crown from her messenger bag and pushed it towards his stomach. "I'll pay you back I promise."

Snape pushed the crown back towards her gently. "You don't have to pay me. Last night was plenty."

"Of course, I still owe you. God, didn't anybody ever teach you to never work for free?"

"Why don't you sell it? We'll split whatever you get." Snape said with a smile. "That way you have money to start your new life and I don't go to Azkaban for possession of and attempting to sell stolen merfolk artifact."

"Oh, good point." Ariel said as she stuffed the crown back into her bag.

Together, they walked over to the fireplace. Snape performed Wingardium Leviosa to remove the boiling cauldron from the fire. Ariel extinguished the flame with a glass of water found on his desk. She stepped into the fireplace and gave Snape one last adoring smile. "It was nice to meet you, Professor Severus."

"It was exceedingly nice to meet you, Miss. Ariel."

She tossed the floo powder at the ground, crying out, "Diagon Alley." With a loud blast of green flame, she was gone and Snape stood there, staring at the spot she last stood wistfully, before he remembered Draco.

"What?" Snape said when he opened the door to find Draco's slumped against the brick hallway wall. "Oh, Lord. Draco you look…"

"Like elf shit? I'm aware." Draco said, lifting his head to reveal a haggard, shallow face and a pair of empurpled, puffy eyes. He rubbed his temples and asked, "Who were you talking to?"

"No one."

Draco gave him a mischievous grin. "She didn't sound like no one."

Snape glowered at him. "What was so urgent, Mr. Malfoy?"

"There's no way I can go to class today. I haven't slept in weeks. I'm so run down I'm convinced if I stay awake another hour, I'm going to literally drop dead. I need a sleeping draught." Snape would have told him no had the boy not added, with the most desperate little voice, "Please."

Snape let out a heavy exhale which Draco knew was a sign of relent. He smiled at Snape as he retreated back into his office. "So, what's her name?" He said teasingly. He couldn't help himself. Teasing Uncle Sev was one of his favorite pastimes, besides goading Potter and writing hilarious diss tracks about his enemies.

"Nope."

"Fine. Don't tell me. I'll just ask her when I meet her."

"Sod off."

A second later, Snape was in the doorway with a small glass vial in his hand. Draco reached for it but he withdrew his hand, telling him firmly, "Don't make this into a habit."

"I won't," Draco promised, snatching the vial from his hand, uncorking it and tossing its contents down his throat. It hit his stomach with a burning sensation before he felt the wavy warmth, warning him to find a bed soon before he would pass out mid-step. In a bratty slur, he told Snape, "Thank you Uncle Sevy."

"Sod off," Snape said unenthusiastically as he stepped aside allowing Draco to enter his bedroom.

"I love you," Draco said in a childish little voice as he crawled underneath Snape's blankets.

"I love you too, you little shit," Snape said softly as he closed the door.


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four: Murder, Mayhem and Meetings

Ariel arrived into Diagon Alley in a swoosh of smoke only to find the shopping promenade was nearly empty. Shops stood in unlit clusters of failure and hard times. There were fewer shoppers. Anybody who walked by her kept their heads down and their feet hurried.

She took to the first open clothing shop she could find. She half-ran into the shop not because she was fearful but because the morning September sun hung dull and cold and she needed something with sleeves immediately. She approached the counter, dug out the gold sickles she collected over the years, and dumped two handfuls of them onto a dusty counter. She looked up into the business witch who stood behind the counter and told her, with a misplaced smile, "Good morning." The owner of the shop did not return her greeting but rather continued to eye Ariel warily with a face that said what the hell do you want? Ariel flashed her a warm smile and told the shop keeper in her melodic voice, "I need a new dress. I'm going on a date tomorrow."

"Fascinating," replied the shopkeep drily. She touched a few Galleons and told Ariel, "Best I can do with this is a cheap dress."

"Chic cheap…or cheap-cheap?"

The shopkeeper eyed Ariel's body with a quick vertical glance through before she turned on her heel, disappeared into the back and returned, minutes later, brandishing a plain pale pink long-sleeved dress with an asymmetrical hem that hung above the ankle. "It's fairy-made but the bottom was torn up by feral goblins so that's why it's eighty percent off."

"Works for me," Ariel remarked.

The shopkeep rang up the total while Ariel, to the business witch's dismay, undressed right there, stuffing Snape's cloak into her bag while her ass hung out in front of the wall-sized window where she unintentionally gave the few inhabitants left in Diagon Alley a great view of her ass.

Ariel's favorite quality about herself, besides her voice, would always be her hair. Not because it was long or lovely or it held a perfect bounce but because of the color. Those long fluttery vibrant blood-red locks that draped her back. That could be seen from miles away and drew predators and prey in better than any bait.

Stepping back into Diagon Alley, her hair caught the attention of a random asshole who felt entitled to her time.

"Hey, baby," called out a janky-looking wizard into her ear as she passed by him and four other similarly dressed wizards smoking together against a brick corner. He made loud kissy noises at her and cried out obnoxiously, "I love your hair. Love to see what color your nipple hair looks like."

His friends laughed away.

"Fuck off," Ariel replied without stopping which only served to make the janky wizard's friends cackle.

With his ego bruised, the wizard stormed towards Ariel chasing her down until he managed to yank her by the wrist and force her to face him. He had his wand out, his mouth opened ready to deliver cruel retaliation, but Ariel stopped him dead.

"You might as well rip your dick off if you're going to be such a little bitch." Ariel bellowed at him.

His two friends watched in awe and horror as their friend did precisely as she said. His wand fell from her face to his own waist. A second later, blood exploded from his crotch and the wizard wailing from excoriating pain.

One of his friends charged towards her, wand raised but again, they were too slow.

"Kill yourself." Ariel snarled and the wizard's arm reversed away from her and towards himself as they produced the killing curse. The corpse collapsed mere steps from his friend's twitching, bleeding, dying body.

A deadly silence penetrated Diagon Alley as a stand-off ensued between the lone woman and the remaining Death Eaters. Ariel unhinged her jaw and bellowed out an ear-shattering roar that rattled the buildings, blowing brick and mortar asunder. Debris fell onto more death eaters and squished them out of existence in a second. When the dust settled, Ariel stood there, defiant and glaring at the rest of the witnesses, daring them to try again. None of them did. They scattered like ants. Ariel went to turn but before she could a high-pitched woman's voice yelled out, "Petificus Totalus." Her body planked and crashed into the stone ground, unable to hold her own hands out to break her fall. She landed hard. When she tried to get up, she was horrified to discover her body and her mouth were bound still.

"Well, well, well." She heard a voice say as the sound of footfalls approached her. Ariel watched in heart-juddering terror as a pair of black high-heel boots stepped in her direct vision before one boot nudged her by the shoulder and flipped her onto her back, forcing her to look. A long black-haired woman with hooded eyes towered over her, peering down at the helpless Ariel with unmistakable delight. "What do we have here? Killed five Death Eaters and you didn't even raise a wand. Don't see that every day."

She punctuated her observation by pressing her foot directly into Ariel's diaphragm, crushing the very limited amount of air Ariel could take in. She giggled deliriously when she noticed Ariel's struggle. The woman might have stomped on her lungs, for fun, had she not noticed the contents of her bag as they were strewn across the ground.

Bellatrix snatched the bag and started rummaging around. "Ha, nerd." She laughed, pulling out a copy of Potions Head Monthly to deride her. But then her hand touched the crown and her eyes bulged out of her head as she held it in her hand, looking equal parts mesmerized and baffled.

"Well, well…well." She breathed as a cruel smile stretched across her lips. "Now, this is interesting."

It started off an idle, mundane day for Lord Voldemort. Such as it happens during war. Not every day's going to be all meetings murder and mayhem. Even Voldemort had do-nothing days.

In fact, he had looked forward to this particular day for a week now. For his only plan for that day was to feed Nagini and curl up with his new favorite read: the little shit known as Draco Malfoy's diary.

He found it two minutes after Narcissa took Draco to Platform 9 3/4s tucked into an old shoebox and hadn't found the time to actually sit down and finish it. So today was going to be that day. He butchered an elf first thing for Nagini and left the kitchen for his bedroom (aka Lucius and Narcissa's old master bedroom) with his reading material in hand ready to indulge in some long-awaited reading time.

But his crackly, dried out foot barely made it past the fourth step when the unmistakably annoying voice of Bellatrix LeStrange rang up from behind him, saying, "My Lord! My Lord! Where are you, My Lord?"

He growled. "Ugggh! I'm in the kitchen." He stood where he was while Bellatrix skittered into the kitchen, looking more crazy-eyed than usual.

"My Lord! We've lost five men today."

"What?! Where?! How?!"

"It happened at Diagon Alley. There was an ambush…Rudolfo, Yemo, and the Beckles Brothers are dead."

Voldemort dropped his head. He didn't know which Death Eaters she meant specifically but any loss to the organization was at best an inconvenience and at worst a shitshow coming in slow motion. "Fucking fuck." He growled, lifted his head, and asked, "Who did this? Did you get them?"

"I got them," Bellatrix said with cruel pride. "But," her face turned from joking to serious, "she has no ID. And the ridiculous part, My Lord, she didn't even use a wand."

"…This person attacked and killed five of my followers without so much as lifting a wand?" His voice was stained with rage, confusion, and intrigue. "How can this be?"

"I swear. I wouldn't have believed it myself if I didn't see it myself…She just yelled at them and they just ripped their dicks off and Avada Kedavra'd themselves."

"She made a man…rip his penis off? Just by telling him to?"

"I swear on a pint of Veritaserum."

"Merlin's beard, who is this witch?" He half-exclaimed.

"Wait, there's more." She pulled out the crown from her robes and gave it to him. "When I went through her stuff, I found this."

He gave the crown a momentary glance before he demanded, "Where are they?"

She led him into the next room where a red-headed woman hovered remained bound and silenced hovering above the polished floor. Underneath her shadow laid the contents from her bag scattered around by Bellatrix. Garbage mostly. Magazines, forks, dead flowers, mini vials, seashells, bottle caps, driftwood, an old black robe, and an unremarkable amount of money. He turned his attention to the woman and discovered—he knew her face.

He turned his attention back to the garbage and a piece of paper being used for a bookmark caught his eye. He knelt down and pinched his long, dried out fingers around the page, pulling it out from its place. Just as he suspected, it was nothing but a moving sketch of a mermaid diving into water rendered on torn parchment paper.

But he held it for a time without speaking as long-forgotten memories flooded over him. He felt a laugh build in his chest and after a few moments of grotesque smiling, a crow-like cackle broke out of his chest.

He looked at the sketch then back at Ariel, giving her a toothy-lipless smile that made her insides clench.

She came to in frozen weightlessness with a closed-mouth gasp. Every inch of her body was tied up with invisible ropes. Even her open eyes weren't spared. The magical ropes pressed hard against her eyeballs, rewarding every twitch she made with a painful throb.

Worse, she could feel Death was nearby, standing before her. She felt their presence like a panic attack.

Hopeless, and convinced she was going to die, she wanted nothing more than to cry but found the spell used on her wouldn't let her. She was nothing more than a living statue, helpless silent, and doomed.

In her agonizing wait, she heard the woman's high-pitch laugh and the sound of footfalls coming towards her but whereas she expected the woman with the high-heeled boots instead found a chalk-white snake-faced creature in ash-black robes standing over her.

She had no idea that this creature's name was Lord Voldemort or that they were in the basement of one of his followers or that the name of the woman who delivered her to him was Bellatrix Lestrange. However, she did see the delirious glint in the snake-face man's eye and notice how he reeked of blood.

Voldemort's face was impassive, though his ice blue eyes poured over her which caused a cold sweat to run down her back as she felt the furious grip of death descend over her.

Minutes eked by as he stood there, eerily silent and still, rummaging through her belongings as if he were deciding which he wanted to take from her after he took her life from her. He disappeared from her vision to bend down and retrieve something she couldn't see before straightening his back, his eyes focused on a drawing she was fond of.

She watched his face, studying him as he studied the sketch, her heart pounding so loudly she was convinced the snake-faced creature could hear it and that's why they took so long to address her.

A second later, those cold unloving eyes changed to warm, delighted surprise. "Ariel." He said her name like it was that of an old friend. "I always hoped you were still alive."

Ariel's eyes couldn't move but if they could they would have bulged and her eyebrows would have furrowed in utter bewilderment. How did this creature know her name?

To her and Bellatrix's shock, the snake-faced man waved his arm allowing her body to gently drop to the ground while the invisible shackles fell from her limbs and lips.

When her feet touched the ground, she was unnerved to find herself speechless underneath this hideous, smiling face. Adrenaline coursed through her lungs as she demanded, "Who are you? And how do you know me?"

"My name is Lord Voldemort." He informed her patiently with the same, almost-loving smile that didn't fit his face at all. "But you knew me once as Tom. Tom Riddle."

A small, surprised wind left her throat when he introduced himself not from the insane fear of standing before the cruelest, most powerful wizard to ever live but because it finally dawned on her how they knew each other. His face disappeared, morphing into that of a little chubby-faced boy with black hair and intense eyes. "The boy from the cave," she said with a soft incredulous gasp. Voldemort nodded, looking thrilled that she remembered him. "Holy shit…it's been—"

"Decades!" Voldemort cried out with a laugh as he flung his arms open wide and stepped forward to embrace her. He folded his arms around her but she was too shocked and terrified to return to the hug. But he didn't seem to notice her stiff spine or her flared, disbelieving eyes when he drew backward, his cold dusty hands clapped onto her upper arms and peered down at her face, grinning. "Sixty years if you can believe it!"

Ariel, terrified of offending the wizard, forced out a smile and said with wide-eyed agog, "I can't believe this! You…look…so different."

"I know!" He said with a good-natured laugh. "I have definitely changed a lot since you last saw me. But then again," He gestured to her legs. "So, did you!" He took a step back and appraised her. "Wow. You haven't aged one bit! It's a good thing too. I almost didn't recognize you without the tail." Then he turned his head over his shoulder and addressed a stupefied Bellatrix, telling her with great reverence, "Bellatrix, I'm delighted to inform you that you are in the rare presence of royalty." He gave Ariel a flourish of his pale arm and announced, "This is Ariel, former siren princess, daughter of King Triton, granddaughter of King Neptune, and…" He turned his head back to Ariel and added somewhat tenderly, "A childhood hero to yours truly."


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five: How Tom Met Ariel

He was nine when they met. It was during one of Wool's day trips to the beach which was the orphanage's way of placating the kids and to ensure they could avoid another gruel riot by buying them ice cream and letting them run in the sand for a full day.

Tom loathed beach days, almost as much as he despised the adults who ran Wool's with an iron-will but were mawkish and caring out in public. He hated it all. The sun, the sand, his housemates who ran around like chickens with their heads cut off and shrieked and played and ate sandy treats like they were regular children. But Tom knew better by then. They would never get to be normal children who grew up into normal adults with normal lives. They were all doomed, himself included, to lives of poverty, hardships, and unnoticed deaths. He saw their lives for what they were. They were the bastard offspring of cadavers who will grow up to be nothing more than pathetic adults with nothing to look forward to than a pauper's grave. If they ever grew up to be adults at all. And that knowledge scorched his soul and filled his little body with more rage than he knew what to do with.

Anger radiated within him daily, hourly, constantly, and with no one else to turn his anger on, he unleashed it onto his fellow orphans. Because if he was going to be miserable then so would they.

He made the plan the moment he saw the cave. He was going to lure Dennis and Amanda into the cave and he was going to see what the insides of their skulls looked like. Convincing them to sneak away was easy. For some reason, the other kids always listened to him even if it was obvious, they were terrified of him. He couldn't explain it himself. He had such a small, childish voice, it grated against his own ears, but he knew what to say to get people to like him. To do what he wanted.

Even as he led them away from the comforts of the summer sun to the coolness of the cave, they believed his lies.

"I bet we could find buried treasure in here," Tom told them tantalizingly. Even back then, he knew the best form of persuasion involved riches.

"I don't think we should…" Dennis began fearfully, taking timid glances over his shoulder to the mouth of the cave.

His contemporary's fear pissed Tom off greatly so much that he lost his sangfroid and turned to lambast the child, for being so weak-willed and moronic, when he stopped. When he turned his head quickly, something shiny winked at him from the corner. Suddenly the promise of treasure was greater than his bloodlust and Tom ventured towards a ravine, despite his companions' protests.

He climbed over a set of rocks and leaned forward to discover, just beyond the rocks laid a cove were in the cove beheld an assortment of wonders: Books, paintings, tea kettles, jewels, gold chalices, pots, pans, utensils, great treasures mixed with everyday items like a ramshackle museum.

"Did you find anything?" Amanda's voice cried out, nervously.

"No," he lied as he grabbed for a gold coin that dazzled at him from its dirt shelf. His hand was halfway into his shirt's pocket when a voice scolded him gently, "Put it back."

He looked up and found a red-headed woman in a purple bikini top swimming in the dark green waters. Tom froze, half-afraid and half-defiant, his hand still wrapped around the gold coin.

The woman held out a waiting hand which irked him greatly. He wanted to be defiant. To tell her to fuck off and run off with his newly acquired riches but he felt his free will leave his arm as it rose up, against his wishes, to give back what he stole. When the coin fell from his fingers, he felt the control return to his arm and it was at that moment he recognized the power in this creature before him.

"How did you do that?" He demanded, half-flabbergasted and half-beseeching.

She blinked at him but before she could answer Dennis's voice cried out, in confusion, from behind, "Do what? I didn't do anything."

Tom barely remembered the other two children and when they approached the rock he sat on and discovered Tom was talking to a strange lady with blood-red hair and a fishtail swimming in a dim watery cave, he didn't chase after them as they ran away screaming.

The woman didn't seem to care about them either for her focus was squarely set on him. He could tell from the expression on her face that his unwillingness to be afraid of her interested him.

"Did you make me give the coin back to you?" Tom asked, modulating his voice so that it was less of a demand and more of a question.

"I did," she replied.

Tom blinked at her with awe. "You can control people with your voice?"

"I can."

He almost gasped. So, there was more to this dull world than what the adults at Wool's led him to believe. Mermaids and magic did exist.

"Can you teach me?"

Her head turned sideways at him as she regarded him quietly. Her tail rippled the waters behind her and Tom followed the ever-expanding rings until they vanished into nothing. Finally, she told him, "I'm sorry. I can't. It's just something I can do as a siren."

His mouth clamped tight with disappointment. His insides broiled with envy. Why couldn't he be special? He knew he was special. He knew it in his bones. So why was every adult he ever came in contact with trying to squelch his potential?

"Shit," he hissed. He looked at her, expecting her to scold him for his potty mouth but she merely blinked at him with unconcealed amusement as she slowly swam towards the shoreline.

"Why do you want to control people so badly?" She asked after she took a seat on the water-logged sand, leaving her tail in the waters.

"Because…" He started then stopped. He almost told her the truth. He never told adults the truth if he could avoid it. Yet this adult—this mermaid, who despite being a different species than him was still older than him and thus considered to be another odious adult to him—was threatening to break his self-imposed rule of never telling anymore what happened at Wool's.

"Because?" She repeated, coaxingly.

But he didn't continue, instead choosing to look away from her as if suddenly shy.

"My name's Ariel by the way. What's yours?"

"Tom. Tom Riddle."

Ariel stuck out her wet hand and Tom eyed it like a venomous snake before he took it and gave it a shake.

"It's very nice to meet you, Tom Riddle." She said. "Were the two kids who ran off your brother and sister?"

"No," Tom said, quickly, almost disgusted by the idea of being related to those morons. "They're just kids that live with me at the orphanage."

He watched her eyes, waiting for them to change into loathsome pity but they never did. Ariel's eyes remained bright and welcoming as when he told her his name.

"Oh, well, they seem like real scaredy-cats," Ariel remarked. "Not like you. You're fearless."

Little Tom almost blushed, proud, and thrilled to receive some praise (praise was nonexistent back at Wool's. Any and all good acts were met with apathy while any and all mistakes were met with swift and severe punishment). "Nothing scares me," he replied confidently.

"That's great," Ariel said encouragingly. "That's the one thing you need most in life: courage. That and a good friend group. Do you have any friends back at the orphanage?"

Tom's smile disappeared usurped by a scowl. "No." He said firmly. "And I don't need any."

"Maybe you don't," Ariel remarked with a shrug. "But you know, I've lived a long life, and the one thing I've noticed is: things are a lot easier when you're not doing everything on your own."

He reconsidered her advice. She wasn't telling him he had to make friends like all the teachers and social workers told him to, but she did make a good point. Things were easier whenever he had someone else there to take the fall for his plans.

"How old are you?" Tom inquired.

"I'll be a hundred and forty years old soon," she replied.

"Wow," Tom blurted out, impressed but sick with jealousy. He read in a magazine recently that the average age for most people nowadays was a paltry 58. "I hope I live that long."

"Maybe you will," Ariel said sweetly. "Maybe you'll be the first human that lives forever."

Tom beamed at her but the smile was short-lived as he heard one of the workers from the orphanage scream his name. Tom looked over his shoulder to say goodbye but only caught the sight of Ariel's tail slapping against the water as she vanished with a swan dive.


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six: Voldemort's Hero

"…A childhood hero of yours truly."

His words cascaded down her ears like cold rain. She felt her stomach lurched violently as the reality of what he said settled on her.

At some point, Ariel blacked out and came back to in an opulent goth kitchen she'd never seen before. She was sitting alone at a long, sleek, black table. A stray ray of sunlight broke through a nearby window and caressed her back of her neck. For a split second, everything felt so serene and surreal, as if she had just awakened, safe and sound, after a horrible dream.

To her surprise, a black iron tea kettle came down from the sky followed by two porcelain teacups. The steamy teakettle poured out a generous serving into each cup, using its spout to nudge one in front of her and the second to the other side of the table before settling down in the center, hopping down on a black doily like a frog returning to its Lilypad.

She wrapped her index finger around the handle when she felt the presence of someone looming over her. When she looked up and saw Lord Voldemort joining her, she had to stifle out the primal urge to scream, vomit blood, and have a heart attack.

A childhood hero of yours truly…Her eyes, head, and stomach swirled as her brain forced her to relive those words. She fought down visceral shame and abject despair when his voice finally broke through her, asking, cheerfully, "Sugar?"

"No, thank you." She replied, biting back bile and forcing out a smile.

Voldemort scooped himself a generous spoonful of sugar stealing a surreptitious glance or two at his guest as he stirred his tea. Ariel snapped out of her reverie long enough to catch one of his jackal-like grins.

"You look terrified," He observed as he drew the cup to his curled lipless mouth.

"I am," Ariel confessed with a nervous laugh. She saw no point in lying. Everyone knew the wizard could sniff out a lie the way sharks could sniff blood from miles away. She continued laughing as she said, "No offense but you're a terrifying individual."

Voldemort touched his hand to his clavicle, charmed. He had a look on his face like she had given him the highest compliment he had ever received in his life. "That means a lot coming from you."

"Really?"

He laughed, took another sip, placed his cup on the table, and said, "You're kidding right?" When the look of incomprehension didn't change in her face, he explained, "Do you know how long it took me to learn how to make another wizard rip his own dick off against his will? I'll tell you. Twelve years. It took me twelve years of practicing and studying and that was with the use of my wand. You did it with nothing more than your voice and then you killed four other people afterward like it was nothing! Do you have any idea how stupendous that is to me? Hell, I'm terrified of you!"

Ariel chuckled, half-shocked, and profoundly flattered. "Really?"

"Absolutely." Voldemort insisted.

Ariel's body eased as a relieved breath escaped her lips. "Wow…I don't know what to say." She paused for a few heartbeats then added, "You know, it's funny. I often wondered what happened to that little boy in the cave…"

"You thought of me?" Voldemort asked his turn to sound surprised and touched.

"I did," Ariel said, pensively as the boy's phantom appeared in the kitchen and climbed onto an untaken chair to join them. Ghostly scenes of their time in the cave together passed by her eyelids. Him, nine and full of baby fat. He, a few years older, showing off his school uniform. Him, a preteen, handing her a drawing, explaining to her, his prepubescent voice soaked with haughty pride, the difficulty of pulling off an animation spell on a drawing for his age. She still remembered him telling her when she tried to give the sketch back to him, 'No, I made it for you'. She remembered being so touched by his thoughtfulness she had to wait until he left for Wool's to cry. But those sweet memories crumbled to dust as her thoughts turned back to the headlines from the last decades of his murders, his bloodshed, his cruelty. "Meanwhile…I've heard about He-Must-Not-Be-Named every day for the last forty years and I had no idea the two were the same person."

Voldemort listened to her with the brightest, widest-smile on his disfigured face. "The fact that you know of my accomplishments means the world to me." He said. "I am…so thrilled that you are alive to see what I have become. When we met, I was nothing. A little nobody with nothing. No family, no skills, no focus, no purpose. But then you—you came into my life and you inspired me! You made me into the person I am today. Ariel, you're my origin story."

His words shook Ariel to her core. Within seconds, she was convulsively sobbing into her hands tormented by the overwhelming, contradictory emotions that coursed through her.

"I didn't mean to embarrass you," Voldemort started looking extremely uncomfortable by the wild display of emotions.

"You didn't." She stammered out as she used her sleeve to dry her face. "I just—I didn't—I didn't realize how much an impact I've made on you."

"Not just on me," He replied, almost awed. "But in the world. Ariel, you made history. And you realize once I rise to power, and they start writing about my life's story, you're going to be one of the most famous creatures to ever walk to the planet? There will be songs sung about you and your influence. Historians will fight each other to the death just to get a word from you. You will be a living legend."

With that, he reached forward, tapped Ariel on the hand, and said, his voice soaked with sincerity, "I can't thank you enough for what you've done for me." Then he paused and she noticed a realization cross over his eyes. "Hm. I just realized…I think you were the first person to actually give a shit about me. Hm." Then he let out a dismissive laugh as he took another sip of tea.

"But, enough gushing," he replied using his wand to pour them both another cup of tea, "Tell me about you. What have you been doing for the last sixty years?"

"Oh, nothing much," Ariel replied. "Kinda drifted around for a while, excavating sunken ships, making potions. Other than getting my legs back, the most exciting thing that's happened to me in the last six decades was getting one of my recipes published."

"Oh, I saw your copies of Potions Heads Monthly. That reminds me, I really want to introduce you to one of my followers. Good guy, kind of boring but I think you'd hit it off. He actually edits for that magazine."

"No shit," Ariel replied, barely listening for a nauseating numbness had begun to erode her insides.

"Yeah, he used to teach the subject too," Voldemort said in-between sips. "Oh, that reminds me…I need to call a meeting soon. I got to introduce you to the troops." He nudged her with his elbow playfully and said with a laugh, "Can't afford to lose any more followers to you now."

Ariel made herself laugh as the sickness in her stomach grew denser. You are bottom of the ocean floor putrid whale shit, Triton's voice sneered in her ear. Suddenly, he was at the table too. Only he was glaring at her, piercing her heart with unyielding contempt. I know, she thought sadly as she shared a laugh with Lord Voldemort.

"I'll make the meeting for tomorrow," he informed her.

"I can't tomorrow. I have a date." She said without thinking.

Something in his face changed. She felt her throat tighten and the air thin from her lungs as images of her torture, her drawn-out murder, flooded her mind.

But then he blinked and he gave her the oddest, closed-lipped grin. "Oh," His voice rumbled with mock scandalization. "Gross."

Ariel let out a hearty laugh in spite of herself. "Well, I see your views on sex and love stayed the same."

"Some things never change," he snickered and for a heartbeat, they were giggles. Until Voldemort said, with all seriousness, "So tonight then?"

Ariel hesitated but the coward in her spoke first, "Tonight? Sure. Why not?"


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven: What Kind of Bullshit Is This?

"What kind of bullshit is this?" Bellatrix exclaimed, half-dismayed and half-seething with jealousy as she stood against the glass door that separated the kitchen to the giant, well-manicured, and albino infested garden with her sister. They were watching the Dark Lord hold an animated conversation with the red-headed land siren.

"I don't know," Narcissa admitted, nearly speechless. She wouldn't have believed it if she weren't seeing it for herself. At first, when she came back from her daily four-hour excursion to the liquor market and had a distressed Bellatrix explain the situation, she thought her sister was exaggerating. Bellatrix was hatefully jealous of any person who seemed to curry the Dark Lord's favor. It didn't matter the Dark Lord had the mood swings of a dictator or that being his "favorite" often meant inevitably getting pushed off of a higher pedestal. "This is weird."

"So weird!" Bellatrix screeched her hooded eyes flared as they were unable to tear themselves away from the pair.

It didn't help, Narcissa suspected, that this creature—this pseudo-siren—was beautiful. Extremely beautiful in fact. Though she doubted this meant anything to the Dark Lord, Narcissa knew this only served to enrage Bellatrix more.

"It's—it's like he's—" Bellatrix sputtered; her fury was too fast for her own thoughts. "Fangirling."

"Adella, Alana, Aquata, Arista, Attina, and Adrina."

They both cringed, audibly. He was listing the names of her sisters, proving that he had read all the books he swore he read about her.

"This is too fucking weird." Bellatrix spat, folding her arms across her chest, frowning and glaring.

Narcissa studied the pseudo-siren. "She seems…nervous."

"I don't know why," Bellatrix said acrimoniously. "I spent twelve years in Azkaban for that man. I barely got a thank you. This fishy bitch is here for two hours and he thanked her forty times for being "a spectacular influence on him"." Then, Bellatrix gasped. "You don't think he wants to fuck her, do you?"

"I doubt it," Narcissa said emphasizing doubt. "I mean, this is the Dark Lord. If he wanted to, he would've forced himself on her already."

"You would hope so," Bellatrix said with bitter disappointment. She thought of all the times (19 since she got out of prison to be precise) she had thrown herself at the Dark Lord only for him to rebuke her, again and again, and again. She unfolded then refolded her arms, too agitated to stand still but too stubborn to move from her spot. This was torture. Only this worse, because she actually liked being tortured. T

The Dark Lord and the fake-siren shared a laugh. She ground her teeth so hard her molars they nearly turned to dust. "This is bullshit."

Narcissa didn't reply. She merely watched the unlikely pair as they continued to talk like old friends while the beginning of the idea formed in the back of her head.

By the time Snape and Draco arrived for their impromptu midnight meeting with the Dark Lord, the general consensus of the room was, what the fuck is going on?

"Did you hear?" "Hear what?" "No?" "There was…" "No!" "Yes!" "We lost…" "Merlin's Beard." "For fuck's sake!" "How?" "Who?!"

It took everything in Draco to not run up and hug his mother when he found her. He wasn't ashamed to admit he missed her, and his aunt. But when he tried to catch their eyes as he took his seat at the dining room tablet all his mother did was squeeze his hand underneath the table before turning her solemn face downward, as if suddenly fascinated with the black wooden table she and her husband had owned for generations. He couldn't help but notice the manic glee in his aunt's eyes were gone. Something was wrong, he knew and when he looked across the table to find Snape with his hands folded out in front of him, nose pointed down like he was waiting for the worst, Draco felt his heart drop to his feet.

All conversation died the moment the Dark Lord stepped into the room.

He walked to the head of the tablet, clasped his pale spider-like fingers around the headboard of his chair and told the room, "As I'm sure you are all aware, we lost five members to our organization today."

The air in the spacious room thinned. Nobody dared make a sign of mourning for the dead. When you're a Death Eater, death wasn't seen as a tragedy. It was seen as a mark of weakness not only for the individual and group but on the Dark Lord too. And the Dark Lord loathed failure.

"Now," the Dark Lord began as he started to walk slowly around the table, "At first, when I found out, I was furious. Absolutely furious. After all, how could we lose five members in a random Thursday morning squabble, right? But then, I found out who the person responsible for such an attack was…" The Dark Lord turned on his heel and started back to the chair. Everyone waited with bated breath as they watched him return to his chair and rubbed his chalky hand against the ornate back of the chair before he turned his attention back to the room and said, "Then, that's when I realized—this was my fault."

Reflexively, everyone in the room attempted to appease the Dark Lord by dissuading him of his blame.

"No!" Argued the dozens of voices each desperate to be heard groveling the loudest.

But Voldemort raised his non-wand-wielding hand to the group and everyone shut up immediately and he continued, "No, it's true. This ambush that left us five men short was, in fact, my fault. After all, neither Rudolfo, Yemo, nor the Beckles triplets would have known better had I been a little more…open about my childhood."

Draco felt his spine rust over with terror. He looked to Snape but only saw that his godfather's cold calculating eyes were focused on his master.

The Dark Lord smiled nastily at the room. Their consternation, their fears, were intoxicating to him. Then, he took the chair, pulled it out from underneath the table and proclaimed, "That's why I wanted to introduce to you someone who has been a spectacular influence on me for the last sixty years."

With that, the Dark Lord waved his arm and on cue, Ariel emerged into the room out of the shadows looking so ridiculously out of place in her pale pink dress and her bright red hair amongst the sea of darkness. Draco felt the room balk at the sight of her. He looked to gauge Snape's reaction but all he saw was the back of his head as the man turned himself in his seat to give all of his attention to his master and the new guest.

"You are in the rare presence of royalty," the Dark Lord announced as Ariel made slow deliberate steps to the head of the chair and took her place while he stood. "Everyone, joining us today is former princess Ariel. Daughter of Triton, granddaughter of Neptune but more impressively, you are looking at the leading cause of death amongst muggles from 1813 to 1865, second only to war and disease. You may remember her from your old Care of Magical Creatures textbooks as the Great Viper of the Seven Seas but lucky for us she had made the permanent move to land and graciously accepted my invitation to tonight's meeting."

The atmosphere of the room changed profoundly. Silent fear died out to give way for murmurs of intrigue and eventual applause. Draco forced himself to clap despite the disgust that stabbed his stomach. If the Dark Lord liked someone, that meant they had to be fucked up beyond reproach and here he was practically gushing over this creature whom Draco couldn't help notice hadn't lifted her gaze away from the table as if embarrassed by the attention.

"You may find it hard to believe," the Dark Lord continued smiling broadly, "But Ariel knew me when I was nothing but a pudgy little orphan. Back before I knew of my magical blood or I knew of my greatness. Back when I was languishing away in the muggle world, Ariel found me trying to steal from her personal collection. And though she could have easily drowned me then and there, she didn't. Instead, she taught me two of the most important lessons I ever received as a child: First, she taught me there is strength in numbers." (This garnered a tittering of laughter. With his return to power, his followers were in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions.) "But most importantly, she instilled in me a passionate pursuit for immortality. And if it wasn't for her, I can honestly say, I wouldn't be the great wizard that I am today."

He ended his speech by clapping Ariel on the shoulder while the room applauded. When the applause died down, took his hand from her shoulder, looked down at her, and said, "Did you want to say a few words?"

She looked like she'd rather throw up, Draco observed but Ariel took her cue and stood before the room, clearing her throat like a diplomat before unleashing her glorious mezzo purr onto the room,

"Hello, everyone. I'm going to keep this short because, believe it or not, even sirens can't stand public speaking. Ha. Get it? Can't stand… 'cause they have…tails."

No one laughed until Voldemort laughed then everyone laughed.

"First: I want to say right away, I only killed those five people today out of self-defense so, you know, if you don't try to kill me, I won't try to kill you. It's just that simple." Ariel explained, her voice so airy and light it belonged better for conversations about the weather. But her voice was harsh and her blue eyes were narrowed as they moved across the room, saying, "And second, if any of you says something creepy, demeaning or sexual to me, I will not hesitate to make you rip your own genitals off and sing an old sailor's song while you bleed to death."

"She's not joking," Voldemort reiterated with glee. "Ask Bellatrix." He turned to Ariel and asked brightly, "Did you want to demonstrate?"

"No," Ariel replied as she took her seat while the abrupt sounds of a dozen chairs reflexively scooting away in fear danced on her ears. "I think they believe me."

"Excellent," Voldemort said, mollified. "Well, if that's that, then the only thing left then for this meeting is for everyone to get up and pay respects to our honorable guest." Voldemort decided while he pulled a chair from the wall and created a new space for himself beside Ariel at the head of the table. When a stunned silence kept the Death Eaters from moving fast enough to his liking, he shouted, "Now!"

What fresh bullshit is this? Snape asked himself as he got into the groveling line with Draco, Narcissa, and Bellatrix.

What's the problem? Asked a secondary voice.

What's the problem? I finally meet the woman of my dreams and it turns out she's the Dark fucking Lord's fucking idol, that's the problem.

So what?

So what?! You have to be a morally reprehensible person to be liked by the darkest wizard to ever live!

Oh, don't act all prissy. The first thing she told you when you met was about how she murdered her husband. You didn't seem to mind then.

I thought she murdered one person in a heat of passion not countless.

Look who's talking. How many confirmed deaths do you have on your conscious, Severus?

Fair point…I just hoped…

You hoped her love would turn you into a better person. Well, lucky for you she's a piece of shit too. It's probably better for you now. At least you know she's not too good for you.

True…

Besides. At least the odds of him killing her are significantly lowered now. Hell, this might even help you.

How?

The Dark Lord said it himself. She's been a "spectacular influence" over him. Maybe she still holds some sway with the wizard…

Perhaps, he thought as they marched closer to the front of the line. Ariel remained in her seat, looking regal in her wooden throne as she accepted the ass-kissing of the masses. When Dolohov moved aside, allowing his group to move to the front, he tried to guard himself. But then he saw the way her bored blue eyes brightened at the sight of him and he was quickly powerless to stop his heart from melting all over the floor.


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight: Lady Ariel

Bellatrix went ahead with a solemn face and averted eyes as she gave Lord Voldemort and the pseudo-siren she had kidnapped a low, unyielding bow. "My Lord." She said with deep reverence. Then she picked up her back only to bent it again for Ariel tips of her long scraggly brown hair brushed the floor before Ariel's still-bare-feet, her voice almost halting as she pled, "Lady Ariel." To Ariel's discomfort, Bellatrix took the groveling one step further by dropping to her knees, crawling closer to Ariel, grabbing her by the hand and profusely kissing her fingers, pleading in-between wet kisses, "Forgive me for my earlier trespasses." (Kiss kiss kiss) "I know I deserve to be punished for my earlier trespasses" (kiss kiss kiss) "but had I known—"

"I already asked her," Voldemort's irritated voice cut in. "And she's not going to kill you. So, you can stop slobbering on her already."

Bellatrix's head shot up high enough for her to peak through her errant locks of hair to cast a stunned look between the pair. Ariel nodded and smiled at her reassuringly while Voldemort gave her a hard look that said, bitch, you are so lucky.

"Really?" Bellatrix said more shocked than relieved.

Ariel nodded again, gently recoiling her spit-covered hand from Bellatrix's grip as she said with a sympathetic shrug, "These things happen. You weren't the first person to kidnap and I doubt you'll be the last. At least, now we both know."

"Well," Bellatrix said as she slowly rose to her feet looking uncertain and thwarted. "Thank you…for not killing me."

"You're welcome," Ariel replied sweetly before she turned her attention to Draco and Narcissa who stepped ahead and gave their bows. "My Lord. Lady Ariel."

"Ariel, you already know Narcissa." Voldemort introduced lazily. "This is Narcissa's son, Draco. One of our newest recruits. He's also the owner of the room you'll be staying in tonight."

"It's for only for the night," Ariel added to Draco reassuringly noticing right away the look of abject humiliation on the young boy's face at the sound of someone being in his room. Then to Narcissa, she said, "Thank you again for the kind offer. I hadn't had a chance since I've gotten to land to find a place to rest."

"It's an honor to be able to shelter you," Narcissa said with another quick bow.

"Yes, it's an honor to give you my room while I'm away," Draco said hurriedly like a man on his way to confession he didn't want to make. "But I want to throw this out there: all that stuff you see on my walls…it's for a project."

Ariel didn't respond to this lie with anything other than a look of second-hand embarrassment while Voldemort, who always enjoyed being front and center to other people's humiliations, told him bluntly, "You're too late Draco. We've seen the shrine."

Draco's face dropped. "You did?"

They both nodded.

Embarrassed beyond recognition, it was all he could do to allow his mother to drag him away from the line and scold him under her breath, "I told you to get rid of that thing before you left…"

At last, to Ariel and Voldemort's visibly increasing delight, Snape appeared before them and took his bows.

"And Severus," Voldemort remarked with a coy smile as Snape straightened his back. "Ariel, you are already acquainted with Severus."

"I am," Ariel replied softly her head tilted down coyly at Snape enhancing her sparkling eyes which gleamed under his gaze. "Nice to see you again, professor. I can't thank you enough for…" Her right hand receded from her lap and began to trail the highway of her thigh. "Your work yesterday."

"Yes, excellent work, as usual, Severus." Voldemort praised. "Once again, you've proven yourself to be one of the most talented wizards of your time."

"It was my pleasure," Snape said, making sure his lips barely parted so the words came out in a soft rumble turning Ariel's sweet smile into a lusty lopsided grin.

"Oh, that reminds me," Voldemort said abruptly, taking a stand for the first time since the ass-kissing began. "I must borrow you for a moment, Severus." To Ariel, he explained, "It's Nagini's feeding time and I promised Severus last time he could feed her."

"I got bad news Severus," Voldemort said once they were in the kitchen and the sound of Nagini tearing through sacrificial elven flesh like scraps of paper filled the back corner. "I think Ariel wants to fuck you."

"What," Snape said, clearing his throat after a half-minute of intense deliberation over his next choice of words. "Makes you think that, My Lord?"

"Just the way she looks at you," Voldemort replied off-handedly. "Also, she told me earlier that she thinks your voice sounds like sex on a velvet rug during a thunderstorm."

Snape stood quietly, suppressing the urge to smile and the innate fear growing in his chest while he gauged Voldemort's reaction.

"I don't know how you want to handle this," Voldemort began after an awkward pause floated between them. "But if you turn her down, I highly recommend doing it away from a body of water—"

"My Lord," Snape interrupted. "Do you…want me to turn her down?"

"No," Voldemort replied as if it obvious.

"Are you sure?" Snape asked, cautiously. "Because…there's no shame in admitting you…desire her…"

"Desire her?" He echoed, repulsed. "Ugh! You think that because I worship the woman that I want… ugh!?"

"So, you don't?"

"No! Ugh! You know sex is disgusting, right?"

"So, you wouldn't have a problem if she and I started an…intimate relationship?"

"No! Why would I?! Ugh!" Voldemort demanded with a disgusted shudder. Once the repulsion passed, he asked "So, wait? You wouldn't have an issue sleeping with her?"

"Not at all, no," Snape admitted readily.

"Oh. Good then." Voldemort said, his voice back easing back to its normal octave. "This actually makes the next topic I have to talk to you about much easier. At some point before, during, or after you…ugh…go to town on each other, I need you to convince her to help me kill Harry Potter."

"You want...her to help you kill Harry Potter?"

"Yes."

"Uh, forgive me, My Lord, but aren't you...always...going on about how 'i have to be the one to kill Harry Potter'?"

"Yes, and as much as I would love to be the one to kill Harry Potter, he has turned out to be an...impossbily hard child to kill. So, if I can't kill him, I'd be happy to just... watch him be forced to rip his own dick off and...slowly bleed to death on the cold hard ground, begging to be euthanized."

"Fair point," Snape replied quickly. "But wouldn't it be easier for you to ask her yourself?"

"No, because then she's going to think I said all those nice things about her to manipulate her."

"And…you didn't?"

"No," Voldemort said, his voice soft with a genuineness that Snape had never heard, or expected from the Dark Lord, before. "No, I meant everything I said in there."

"You truly admire her so?"

Voldemort laughed. "You're kidding, right? The woman's a literal god. Or she might as well be one. Her grandparents were gods, her father was a demigod. The woman can make a person rip their own genitals off just by telling them to. I've wanted to do that since I was 8. Hell, that power alone is half the reason I want to achieve immortality so badly so I could spend the next however many years learning how to do that with just my mind. I want to be just like that woman. Also," He paused to look around the room to make sure they were alone. Then with his piercing blue eyes boring into Snape's soul, he added, "I'm only going to tell you this because you two are going to be intimate soon and it'll probably come up anyway but," His face softened slightly. "Some of my few good childhood memories were with Ariel." Snape didn't dare speak while Voldemort's eyes went dreamy and distant. "I remember…when I first got the news that I was a wizard. I snuck out to tell her. I suspected she knew I was magic but she pretended to be surprised when I told her. Then she spent the whole night asking me about what I wanted to be, the classes I would take. She even found an old tie from her collection and showed me how to do a Windsor knot."

Vivid fragments of that night played out before him in the kitchen. He could see his younger-self standing, trying to look bored, while Ariel the little mermaid smoothed his black hair down with her wet hand and admired him in his new uniform which he wore every day from the day he got it. He remembered her making him stay still so she could admire him then he remembered her pulling him into the first proper hug of his life, her melodic voice telling the little rigid boy who wasn't used to affection, "You better visit."

At some point, he remembered himself and pulled himself out of the reverie to find dutiful Snape quietly waiting for him to return to the present.

He gave Snape's face a quick tap with his palm telling him to "treat her well" before he veered towards the door.


	9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine: Conceal

"Where's Ariel?" Voldemort asked, upon his and Snape's return to the dining room.

"Draco's showing her the restroom," Narcissa informed.

Voldemort scoffed. "Bout time that boy did something useful." He muttered as he slowly settled into his chair.

Timid Draco led a quiet Ariel down a lavish, emerald green-carpeted corridor past galleon-encrusted chandeliers and wall-sized oiling family portraits until, in the end, stood the bathroom door.

He stood aside while Ariel quickly darted inside but was shocked to see her come right out before the door had a chance to close. She had with her a leather-bound journal which she shoved in his arms and instructed him, "You gotta learn how to hide your stuff better kid." She then added, "Oh, and don't feel bad about having a shrine dedicated to your crush. When I was your age, I had a life-sized marble statue of my crush in my room." With that, she sealed herself back into the lavatory while a stunned Draco looked down into his own arms to discover she had given him back his diary and, after a moment of confusion, did as she said and tucked the journal into his inner jacket pocket.

When she came back into the hallway, he thanked her profusely (if the Dark Lord hadn't already thought less of him for his father's actions and his shrine, then his diary would have sealed his fate at the bottom of the Dark Lord totem pole right next to blood traitors and Peter Pettigrew) and Ariel, to his gratitude, was kind enough to smile at him and pretend like she had no idea what he was talking about.

"You know," Voldemort said to her upon her return seat, "You don't have to stay."

"Sick of me already?" She said with a teasing smile.

He smiled and blinked. "Not at all. Which is saying something for me because I usually run out of energy for all human interaction once I hit the ten-minute mark."

Ariel crinkled her nose at him with mirth then glanced around the room. Half the Death Eaters were already gone and others were in mid-goodbyes. "Is that why everyone keeps leaving?"

"Oh yeah, they know. Once a meeting's done, it's 'you don't gotta go home but you need to get the hell out'."

Ariel smiled then shot a look towards Snape who orbited to the side as Draco and Narcissa shared a goodbye. Her mind drifted to the other night and a carnal fire was reignited in her.

"God, you're worse than a cat in heat," Voldemort remarked, half-annoyed and half-amused by the obvious lechery in her face.

"Don't shame me," Ariel said half-heartedly then she tore her gaze away from Snape long enough to ask him, her expression changed to that of inviting evocation, "This doesn't bother you?"

"Why would it mother me?" He asked, looking at her like she was crazy.

Ariel waited for him to hear his mistake. When he didn't, she said, "You know what? I think I will take up Severus's offer then."

"Good. Probably for the better." He agreed. Then, with his elbow pressed into his armrest, he leaned towards her and explained in a hushed tone, "I have a meeting with the Full-Blooded Giant Mafia in the morning that's best have clandestine."

Ariel nodded, doing her best to keep her face neutral as cold disgust coagulated in her bloodstream.

A momentary silence passed before he added, somewhat hesitantly, "Well, if you ever want to visit…you know where I'm staying." His head dipped down and she saw his wandless hand twitch. She feared for a second, he was going to reach for one of her hands but he never did. Instead, lifted his head and said with a chuckle, "Let's try to do this again before the next sixty years are up."

Ariel's face turned magenta and they both feared for a moment she was going to burst out crying again but she swallowed the sadness whole and instead gave him tucked-in-lip smile. "I'll try."

By 3 am, Malfoy Manor was as quiet as a graveyard and everyone, except Voldemort, were in their respective beds. Nagini snored peacefully in Ariel's chair while Voldemort watched giant flames engulf the dining room fireplace from his wooden throne, his eyes distant with being lost in his own thoughts about grand schemes.

He was going over the mental checklist of things he had to do for the day but a malaise had started in his chest that forced him out of focus. He thought it was heartburn at first, which confused him because he didn't eat anything out of the ordinary (and he gave up coffee after midnight years ago). He punched himself in the chest but the warm tingling sensation didn't go away and soon, the malaise morphed into discomfort. Now, it wasn't just his chest. A balmy fluttering entered his stomach he never felt before and immediately assumed doom.

Did Potter find another Horcrux? He asked himself with wild fear.

No, it's September. He assured himself. He's usually too busy with his studies.

Then what the hell is going on?

He tried to soothe himself by pacing and drinking water and holding his breath for ten-second increments (he was on the working theory that he was merely experiencing the rarely heard of silent hiccups) but none of them made the horrible feeling go away. Defeated, and filled with dread, he sought Nagini for advice.

"Nagini." He hissed out in parseltongue as he poked his pet in the hood. "Nagini wake up."

The snake lifted its head and stared at him blurry-eyed. "What?"

"I think I'm dying."

"So…Did you want me to eat your corpse afterward?"

"Obviously, no, because I'm never going to actually die, asshole!"

"Why did you wake me then?" Nagini snapped.

"Because! I—I think…" He stopped and sorted his thoughts, searching for the right words to explain what he was feeling. It couldn't be dying. As he said, he was never going to die. And he couldn't be dying because Potter's still in school and if he was near a Horcrux he would know. So why did his head hurt? Why did his stomach feel like it was in knots? And why the hell did his heart, which he swore didn't exist up until ten minutes ago, feel like it was floating around in a milky way of contentment?

Dread exploded within as a terrible truth dawned on him.

"Fuck." He groaned in English.

Narcissa was in one of the guest rooms, nursing a bottle of vampire wine while she laid in bed and stared dejectedly out the second-story window when her bedroom door opened with a bang and from the doorway stood Lord Voldemort.

Narcissa hugged the bottle into her chest, trembling with fear, as the Dark Lord stepped over the threshold and closed the door wordlessly. Her mind raced with images of her violence and death as the sounds of the locks clanked shut. He stood there with his white-spidery fingers tightly wound around his hook of a wand. All pretenses of dignity and courage fell away from her as he put a silencing charm on the room, concealing her to whatever fate he had in store. She started to quake with unmitigated fear as he slowly approached her bed.

"Please…no…" She croaked, misty-eyed, and petrified.

"It goes without saying," the Dark Lord began his voice low and threatening as he migrated to the center of the room, "That what I am about to tell you may never, ever, ever leave this room."

Narcissa managed to pull herself together long enough to give him a vigorous nod, promising her silence.

"That emphatically includes your big sister." He insisted, his voice an angry hiss as he began pacing the room.

"Of course, My Lord," Narcissa assured as she corked the bottle of wine, tucked it under her pillow, and sat upright in her bed attentively. "How—how can I help you?"

Voldemort halted mid-step, his fists clenched at his thighs, looking utterly frustrated by his own inarticulation. He opened his mouth twice and closed it three times before he started to explain, "I think…I love…Ariel." He turned to a stunned Narcissa and added, defensively, "But not romantically. Like I think I love her and I think I want her to love me back but I mostly just want her to be proud of me and for her to visit me sometimes and also the idea of her death doesn't make me laugh in any way shape or form. Is that normal?"

"Um." Narcissa did not know how to answer that question without getting killed or maimed so she circumvented the question with another question. "My Lord, have you ever heard of the word association game?"

"No."

"Well, it's a game where one person will say a word and you say the first word that pops to mind."

"Okay?"

"So, if I said 'magic', you'd say…?"

"Power."

"And if I said 'ghosts', you'd say…?"

"Ha. Losers."

"Flowers?"

"Superfluous."

"Bellatrix."

"Uh, irritating."

"Ariel?"

"Mom." He cringed the second it left his tongue. His head dropped into his tented fingers. "Oh crap! I do love her!" He reached with both hands, clutching at his bare skull as if he had forgotten he had no hair to tear. When his hands came back empty, a ferocious groan roared out of him that made Narcissa flinch but he didn't strike her or destroy anything like she expected. Instead, he stood there, clawing at his hairless head looking somewhere between suicidal and homicidal before he let out a frustrated growl and cried, "What's the point of splitting your soul seven times if you're still going to feel?!" He sunk to the floor with an anguished moan. "Crap!"

Narcissa, fearing if she didn't at least try to comfort him he would torture her for it later, pulled the blankets off of her, and bravely approached the fetal-positioned Dark Lord.

"How did this happen?" He asked, his voice muffled as he face-planted into the ornate rug. "How did I become…that guy? That seventy-year-old guy with mommy issues?" Narcissa opened her mouth to offer her thoughts when he cut in again, head turned sideways so he could breathe, "I mean—I know I was an orphan but…Merlin's beard, am I really that weak? Am I nothing but an overgrown child who needs their mommy?"

"No one thinks that, at all, my lord." Narcissa insisted, shaking her head.

"You're just saying that..."

"I wouldn't dare lie to you, My Lord. If anything, look at tonight."

"What about tonight?"

"Forgive me, my lord, but it was pretty obvious from the beginning that you had…high esteem for Lady Ariel. But even as you were gushing over her, nobody in that room thought you were any less evil or frightening."

Voldemort turned his head and peered up at her from the floor. "Really?"

"I swear to you, nobody thinks any differently of you for your attachment to Ariel," Narcissa said. "We are all still so very terrified of you in every way imaginable."

Voldemort's face twitched into a shadow of a smile. To her immense relief, he got from the floor, stood up, and turned partway towards the door. "Thank you, Narcissa." He turned to leave when he stopped halfway and told her, "Once again, if you tell anybody—"

"You'll slit my throat and feed me to Nagini."

He winked at her once then left the room, leaving Narcissa to resume her solitary drinking her mind spinning with the formation of a new plan to save her son's life.


	10. Chapter Ten

AUTHOR'S NOTE: GET READY DRARRY FANS THIS CHAPTER'S FOR YOU

Chapter Ten: Ruth The Goat's Bar Incident

Mid-Day Thursday (5 hours after the Diagon Alley Incident)

Ron threw down his quill and let out a loud happy sigh looking like the happiest motherfucker that ever fucked. He was sitting in the eating hall with his two best friends and they were all bent over textbooks or reading material of some kind for Hermione had finished her assignments an hour ago and had started reading the paper.

"What are you so happy about?" Hermione said from behind the Daily Prophet.

"Why shouldn't I be happy?" Ron asked. "The sun is shining, five Death Eaters got killed today, it's Thursday which means it's only one more half-day until the weekend, there's a good possibility that Malfoy is dead and or at least crying, and as of right this second, I am officially all caught up with my homework."

Hermione lifted her head with intrigue. "Really?"

"Yep," Ron said, showing his scribbled-up papers as proof. "I did the easy assignments when I got them and worked on the tedious projects ahead of time instead of procrastinating."

Harry scoffed at him in mock disgust. "It's like I don't even know you."

"I wanted the freedom, mate. I wanted to get off of class at noon tomorrow and know that I'll have sixty hours of not having to do anything to look forward to."

"Well, unless you get assigned more homework by your other two classes," Hermione replied.

"Eh, I'll do it right before class Monday." Ron shrugged. He looked up at the glass ceiling which bore a beautiful, clear, cloudless Fall sky and inhaled deeply. "It's a good day."

"You know what? I agree, Ron. It is a good day." Harry said, closing his textbook. "We should do something to celebrate this good day."

"I agree even more," Ron said.

They shared a look then a knowing smile.

"We should go drinking," Ron said.

"Yes. Also, we should go to that bar that has the goat!" Harry cried.

Simultaneously, they looked over at Hermione, seeking approval.

Hermione sat there, mouth opened, hands still wrapped around the paper. A reluctant smile came to her lips. "Screw it. Ron's right. It is a good day." She folded the section she was reading and held it up for them, pointing to a headline that read: HISTORIC 2,000 YEAR LAW OVERTURNED GRANTING INTERSPECIES ADOPTION

"Wait, that was illegal?" Harry asked. Then he asked, more emotionally, "Is that Hagrid never adopted me? Is that why I'm still at the Dursleys?!"

"Don't worry mate. The second you turn seventeen, we're burning that shithole house to the ground," avowed Ron.

"You're the best Ron and I fucking love you," Harry said, dapping him. "But also—are we really doing this?"

They glanced around to see they were all grins.

When they apparated to Hogwarts' Gates, Snape and Draco landed on their feet. Ariel landed on her knees. Concerned, Snape rushed to her aid but she pushed him away so she could hunch over the ground pull her red hair by her nape and vomit in the dirt road.

"I think I'm good," she said in a raspy pant after she coughed out the remnants.

"If it makes you feel any better, lots of people get motion sickness when they apparate for the first time." Draco offered as he and Snape helped her to her feet.

But Ariel's spit-covered bottom lip quivered. "That wasn't from motion sickness."

She rushed to the gate, trailed by Snape. By the time he reached her side, she had her head bent into her hands, shoulders shaking as she let out a tiny, peep of a cry.

Draco watched, numbly, as Snape whispered something into her ear. Ennui swam through him like a virus. Here was this woman, the only person in the world who could possibly be spared by the Dark Lord's bloodlust, sobbing, looking utterly sick with fear. He knew the sounds of utter, hopeless fear. He knew those frightened tears like sleet or rain. But if she—Lady Ariel, Miss Hero, the Dark Lord's Favorite—was scared shitless, how was there any hope for him and his family?

Suddenly, it all became too much. And Draco, without thinking, pushed his weight into his black leather shoes and ran off in the opposite direction of the gates, ignoring his godfather's voice calling for him to turn back as he bolted into the 2 am night.

The dank, old wizard's bar with the sticky floors covered in hay and trace amounts of goat feces was, unsurprisingly, dead. With the exception of Harry, Ron, and Hermione of course who walked into the seedy establishment hours ago, providing that grubby bar with the welcoming sight of profits.

Harry was on the ground, against the wall, feeding carrot sticks to a stinky old goat who wandered the bar freely. Unlike Ron and Hermione, who flirted at each other from a nearby booth, he wasn't drunk. His second drink of the night sat barely touched on the floor next time him. He wouldn't have gotten it had a tipsy Hermione not insisted on buying him one, having observed that he had been "nursing that beer all night".

"That's alcohol abuse, you know." Hermione pointed out, referring to his untouched Butterbeer.

"Fine, then you drink it," Harry replied, handing her the drink.

"Fine," Hermione shrugged before she tossed the liquid back. She gulped it down in seconds and came back up to the sound of her two best friends' cheers.

"Bloody hell, Hermione," Ron said, half-surprised and half-impressed.

"What?" She demanded her voice unintentionally louder as she slammed the empty glass down on the table. "Nerds can be fun too. Right, Harry?"

"Did you hear that Ruth?" Harry asked his new goat friend, with mock dismay. "That dweeb over there has the audacity to call me a nerd."

"Yep," Hermione smirked. She pulled her wand from her pocket and asked, "Wanna duel about it?"

"Nope," Harry replied quickly. "I am good. You win."

Hermione let out an uproarious laugh. Then she propped her fist under her chin, turned her glassy eyes onto Ron and asked, coaxingly, "What about you, Ronald? Are you going to defend your best friend's honor and fight me?"

"Nope," Ron said. "I'm not spending the weekend at the infirmary. No offense mate but fuck your honor."

"No offense taken, mate." Harry agreed, turning his attention back to scratching the area behind Ruth's pointy ears.

"You two suck," Hermione said with a pout, stuffing her wand back with mild disappointment.

Harry looked at Ruth then Ron, shaking his head. "She's such a mean drunk." He whispered at Ron, playfully.

"I am not a mean drunk," Hermione protested.

Ron snickered. "Yeah, you're just mean in general." Hermione's retort came as a smack to the upper arm. "Ow!" He addressed Ruth, saying, "Do you see this abuse?"

Ruth bleated, lazily, as if to say, I'm just a goat what do you want me to do?

The timing of Ruth's bleat sent the Golden Trio into a fit of giggles.

"Oh crap," Hermione remarked once the laughter died done and she lifted her wrist to check the time. "It's 2:30."

"Fuck," Harry and Ron groaned.

"We should go," Hermione said, standing to put on her coat.

The three of them got dressed, paid their tab, said their goodbyes to Ruth, and were on their way out of the door, to brave the brisk blackened trip back to Hogwarts. Harry was the last one to exit the bar but, when he turned to follow Ron and Hermione, he felt his body collide into someone else's.

He barely had time to apologize to the person when he lifted his head and discovered he had run into, who else, but Draco Malfoy.

"Walk much, Potter?" Draco sneered before he shouldered past Harry and rushed into the bar's entrance.

"Fuck your entire fucking life, Malfoy!" Harry howled but his words were met with the sound of the establishment's door slamming Draco inside. He turned to his best friends, nettled and shaking. He could feel his wand sitting in the pocket of his coat, begging to be used.

Hermione and Ron glared at the closed door, their nostrils flared, breathing hard.

"He would skip school all day to go drink alone," Ron seethed. "Fucking loser."

"C'mon guys," Hermione said with a hardness in her voice that signaled she was struggling to calm herself down. "That menstrual cramp of a boy isn't worth it."

"Disagree," Harry stated. He was still glaring at the entranceway. Only his mind was racing. He looked to his friends and said, "You guys go ahead."

"Harry," Ron began, sobered. "Hermione's right. He's not worth it. Let's just go back to the dorms."

"You two can go back," Harry insisted, his feet turned sideways, towards the bar. "I'll be there soon."

Hermione charged towards him, mouth opened, ready to lecture him into coming with them but then a horrible wrenching noise came out of her. To Harry and Ron's disgust, she was doubled-over, puking up the four Butterbeers and plate of fried pixie fingers she consumed that night.

Ron sighed, rubbed her back with his hand until she picked herself up, and told Harry, as his arm hooked around her elbow and led her down the road back to Hogwarts, "Love you mate."

"Love you guys too," He promised before he headed back inside the bar.

Draco was bellied up at the bar when Harry plopped down on the barstool two down from him and told the scruffy bartender his order.

"Why are you so obsessed with me?" Draco demanded when the bartender handed Harry his drink and left to go restock the Fire Whiskey keg.

Harry scoffed. "Coming from you? That's rich."

"Can you move?" Draco snarled after several moments of intense, hateful silence.

"Make me," Harry replied with a bratty smile just to piss him off further.

He expected Draco to glare at him, berate him, even take out his wand and hex him, which is why Harry kept his free hand in his coat pocket, waiting, ready for the kinetic promise of violence to explode between them. But Draco did none of these things. Instead, he shrugged and turned his attention back to his glass. Harry watched him go to take a sip but stop when he noticed, in utter disgust, a hair swirling around the bubbly amber filled glass.

"For fucks' sake," Draco said with an angry sigh. "Is it so much to ask for a clean glass?" He glanced at Harry's glass and made a grossed-out noise as Harry took another small sip. "How can you drink from that? It looks like it was washed with sand."

Harry shook his head at him. "If you were going to be so uppity about clean glasses, why did you come in here?"

It was a fair question. Nothing about the place, from its sticky hay-covered floors to its rampant zoo-like smells to its unwashed bathrooms to its cobwebbed ceilings and decidedly strange decor, screamed 'come for the cleanliness and ambiance'. It was one of those bars that locals loved because it was gross, it's old, it's without pretense, and you could disappear in the corners with your troubles and a pint of beer without having to pretend to be anything you're not.

Draco shrugged, though he knew exactly why he was there. He was there because he needed to disappear and Potter wasn't letting him. He got up and took his drink to the far end of the establishment where he took the first least messy table he could find.

Harry followed him and slide into an unoccupied booth directly in front of Draco.

"Can you fuck off?" Draco snapped.

"I will if you tell me about Voldemort's plans," Harry said.

Draco had to will himself not to flinch at the sound of the Dark Lord's name. A cold chill came over him as the images of previous nights' events replayed in his head. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Potter." He replied coolly, taking a swig from his glass. "I don't work for the Dark Lord."

"You're so full of shit, Draco," Harry said. Then he smiled. "I bet he was furious today that he lost five members."

"Wouldn't know."

"Yeah, I bet you don't. So, where were you all day? Pretty weird that you're out of school all day the same day five Death Eaters are murdered."

Draco gave him a shark-like grin. "Potter, you noticed I was out sick today?" He reached to his collarbone, feigning endearment. "I'm deeply flattered by how much you care about me."

"Suck my dick, Draco."

"Oh, I bet you would love that," Draco said, his voice a salacious whisper, as he rose from his table and walked towards Harry. He noticed the discomfort in Harry's green eyes as he dipped into the booth and took an unclaimed spot across from him.

Harry's eyes narrowed but then he rolled them, as if suddenly too mature for bickering and petty insults. "It's a figure of speech, pervert."

"Oh, don't be such a prude, Potter," Draco replied coyly, inching closer towards him, reveling in the discomfort he was sure to create. "There's no shame in desiring other men."

Harry snapped his neck to glare at Draco only to find that Draco's face was inches from his own. They were so close he could smell the Butterbeer and toothpaste on his breath. Harry felt his throat go dry the longer he stared at Draco's thin mouth which was open slightly from grinning, almost expectantly. Like he knew this would undo him.

But Harry wasn't going to let him win. That's why his left hand started to crawl over Draco's thigh, like a spider waiting to startle an arachnophobe with its presence. He looked into Draco's face, expecting to see fear or disgust, but he was shocked to see Draco's face went slack as he stared down and watched Harry's hand travel over his thigh and find his hardened crotch.

Draco upped the ante by reaching straight for Harry's groin, which tensed and stiffened under his touch.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Their breathing turned shallow as their eyes searched, hesitantly, for the other. Once they found each other's gaze and discovered neither of them was disturbed by what was going on, that's when the fondling began.

Slowly, they rubbed at each other, squirming with delight at other's touch. Their mouths hung open like draw bridges as their breathing went ragged from enflamed desire. It was wonderfully naughty, trying to keep their passions low as they fondled another underneath this grimy booth. There was no one in the bar catch them. The bartender was out on a smoke break and Ruth was napping in a pile of hay. And for a few glorious minutes, they were no longer Harry Potter the boy who lived or Draco Malfoy the boy without options. They were simply two horny teenagers shuddering and gasping, and stealing kisses, in a smelly, dimly lit old wizard's bar.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven: Always

They were both, secretly, dreading this day for years now.

It was Tom's sixteenth beach day with Wool's but come New Year's Eve he would turn seventeen thus ending all legal obligation to stay in the muggle world. Free to live his life in the magical world, untethered by the past.

"Sorry I'm late," he announced, as he climbed down from the rocks to find Ariel swimming patiently in the same area he first met her. "Someone syphoned the gas from the bus again so we had to walk the rest of the way."

Ariel rushed to the sandy bank, saying, "I'm just glad you made it." When she plopped herself beside teenaged Tom, she traced over his changing face with longing eyes. "Oh, Tom…You look so different every time I see you," She breathed, her hand reaching up to caress his beautiful, pale, sharp cheek. "When did you get so handsome?"

Tom rolled his puffy eyes, bashfully, though he never tired of her affections. Even if the voice in him that despised vulnerabilities told him to.

"But you look so tired…" She observed with concern.

"It's my own fault. I keep staying up late to read." He half-lied. Half-lies were good for him. Nobody, except her, got anything close to the truth out of him.

Ariel scoffed, then pinched his nose playfully. "You need to sleep more, ya dork."

Tom smiled at her tenderly before he said, "I got a job offer."

"That's fantastic!" She exclaimed. "Oh Tom, I'm so proud of you."

"You don't even know what the job is," he retorted.

"Doesn't matter. You always get good grades, all your teachers seem to adore you and you're always working so hard…I'm so proud of you Tom. I just know whatever you do in life, you're going to be great."

Tom listened quietly, his eyes averted to the ground, suddenly inexplicably embarrassed by her praise. The two of them lapsed into an awkward silence until Ariel broke it by saying,

"I know you hate goodbyes…"

"Stop," he cut in without conviction.

"Please let me have this," she begged her voice so soft and cracked with emotion he had to relent and she continued, "I know you hate goodbyes, but I just wanted to say," (she grabbed his hand and gave the first four fingers a loving squeeze) "That I am so proud of you and that I love you so much and that I wish you nothing but the best of luck with whatever path you choose in life."

Tom listened to her speech, his mouth fluttered open, looking so torn and anguished by her declarations. He drew his hand out of hers, flung his arms wide, and coiled them around her, declaring, "I'll always love you, Ariel."

For a while, they merely held each other. Until Tom pulled himself out of her embrace and asked, somewhat sheepishly, "Will you sing to me?"

"Of course." She said with a sniffle. "Any song in particular?"

"That one you always sing," he said as he lowered the top half of his body, resting his head on her tail.

"But that's such a sad song." Ariel protested, half-heartedly, as her finger began to trace the conch-shaped outline of his ear, knowing it would the last time she would get to do so.

"I don't care," he croaked, his tears rolling down her tail and blending in with the drops of lake water that hadn't yet evaporated.

Ariel played with a lock of his black wavy hair and began to sing,

"Look at this stuff, isn't it neat? Wouldn't you think that my collection's complete? Wouldn't you think I'm the girl, the girl who has everything…"

Fifty-four years later and somehow that little boy from the cave was still making her cry.

Ariel was sobbing quietly in front of a roaring fireplace in an extravagant gold and scarlet themed office while Snape clued in Dumbledore on the events that transpired.

"Are you sure?" Dumbledore inquired, incredulously. "I mean, this is Voldemort we're talking about. Voldemort can't love. Direct-descendent from Salazar Slytherin, the product of date rape potion, soul split seven times, talks to snakes, can't feel love. That's his whole thing, right?"

"Albus, I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it for myself," Snape swore stealing surreptitious glances at Ariel's depressed body as she laid stomach first on the floor in front of the fireplace. "But he really seems to adore her."

Dumbledore looked over at Ariel's silent figure, his twinkling eyes widened with awe. "Merlin's beard…You must be one hell of a person for Tom Marvolo Riddle to openly care about you, Miss. Ariel."

"Yeah, I'm great." Ariel replied sarcastically as she lifted herself up from her couchant position. She turned and shot a piercing look at the elderly wizard as she added, "Tried being nice to a kid in a cave and look what happens? The kid grows up and commits mass fucking genocide."

"Ariel," Snape said with the sadness of someone bitterly familiar with regret. "You mustn't blame yourself."

"The man literally called me his 'hero'. He told me that 'I wouldn't be the wizard I am today if I wasn't for you'." Ariel ranted, her voice rising with anger and shame as she pushed herself from the floor and started to pace. "He literally called me his origin story. I am the reason that Lord Voldemort exists. I'm the reason there are little kids running around with no parents. I'm the reason millions of creatures are dead. I'm the reason—"

"You're putting too much blame on yourself," Dumbledore insisted. "You're not the man's mother."

Ariel made a derisive snort. "I might as well be." Then her angry face contorted as another crying fit came over her. She squeezed her mouth in an attempt to make the tears stop but he quickly succumbed to weeping and the two men had to watch, helplessly, as she croaked out, "I loved that boy so much." She buried her head in her hands and moaned, "I loved him so much…" She lifted her head and told them, "I would've adopted him in a heartbeat if I could've. If it wasn't illegal…If I had legs…you have no idea how often I fantasized about what I would've done…I would've taken him away from that awful place…" She let out a sad laugh. "I would've kicked the crap out of every worker in that shithole orphanage and then I would've loved that little boy 'til my last dying breath." She wiped her face with her sleeves and forced out a bitter laugh, "I guess I still do. God, what's wrong with me?"

Snape looked at Dumbledore who wagged his chin towards her. Snape took his cue and went to her side, giving her a small embrace which she gratefully took. "There is nothing wrong with you. You were just trying to be there for a child who needed it most." When he let go of her, he told her, "Unfortunately for you, no good deed in this universe goes unpunished."

"So, what should I do?" She rasped. "I mean…I still love the guy. Which scares the living shit out of me, because I know the longer I stay on the land, eventually he's going to ask me to do something that I won't be able to do."

"I'm afraid there are few options," Snape informed her, holding her close to him afraid that this was going to be one of his last chances to feel her body pressed against him or to be the focus of her crystal blue's eyes. "You can either reverse the glamor charm and go back to the ocean…"

"I'd rather die," Ariel said vehemently.

"Or you can stay on land," Dumbledore piped in, "And, hopefully, use your influence on Voldemort to do some good."


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: House of Giant Corpses

By daybreak, Malfoy Manor was flooded with the blood and gore of giants. So much, Nagini swam in it, her long sinewy body zigzagged in ankle deep blood, her mouth unhinged, guzzling it down like water. In Voldemort’s mind, this was the sign of another successful day.  
Bellatrix pushed her wandless hand against the air while her wand emitted a white translucent light which pushed the rivers of deep red out of the dining room, through the kitchen, out the open glass door, dumping the red waste onto the luscious back yard; Narcissa dowsed the blood soaked carpets with blood-be-gone potion, her eyes glazed over with a monotony, for it seemed that once a week her house was dripping with blood and with every passing week her apathy towards her decadent house grew deeper and deeper; and Voldemort hummed as he hacked the limbs off of a giant’s corpse, froze the bloody appendage with a quick flick of his wand, and tossed the frozen meat over his shoulder into a rancid smelling pile in the corner for Nagini to enjoy at her leisure.   
“You’re going to eating good for a while Nagini,” he remarked in parseltongue with a chuckle as he whipped a finger the size of his leg into the bloody meat pile. Torrent of blood rained down on the already soaked wizard, splashing his white skin and black robes. He loved the feeling of blood raining down on him the way most people loved summer rain.   
“Ssssomeone’s coming…” Nagini warned.  
He looked over his shoulder to see the green flash of light coming from the dining room fireplace. He turned and raised his wand lazily for Bellatrix and Narcissa had their wands drawn and pointed at the mouth of the smoking fireplace, ready and waiting to attack whoever stepped out.

“Wait, we’re still going on that date, right?” Ariel asked, as she was pulling on her dress. It was daybreak after they eventually went back to Snape’s office to have earth-shattering sex, slept and reluctantly rose to part ways.  
“If you still wanted to,” Snape said from the other side of the bed as he tied his shoe.  
“What do you mean if I still want to? You’re the one that got the unfortunate luck of starting an affair with Lord Voldemort’s adopted mother.” Ariel argued, self-deprecatingly. She gave him an appraising side glance and remarked, “A saner man would run while he had the chance.”   
“Perhaps,” said Snape as he leaned across the bed to deliver a kiss, “But I was never a sane man.”  
He walked her to the fireplace, handed her a handful of floo powder and kissed her farewell.  
“Got any tips, secret agent man?” Ariel whispered half-teasingly.  
“Keep reminding him of your usefulness,” Snape offered. Then he took a step back and suggested, half-seriously, “Play scared if you can. He loves being feared.”  
Ariel turned her nose at him. “But I am scared of him.”  
“Good. Use that. Better to be scared of him than to let him trick you into a false sense of security.”  
She frowned. What am I getting myself into? She wondered. “Is that how he got you?”  
“No, sadly, I used to be a fool and share a lot of his…ideologies.”  
“What made you change your mind?”  
Snape looked to the side like he spotted a ghost in the corner. Then after a heartbeat, he said, “When he killed my best friend and her spouse, I knew I was on the wrong side.”   
He said it so matter-of-factly she wanted to cry but instead she gave him a small apologetic frown then let out a heavy sigh. What am I getting myself into? She thought as she looked down at the powder sitting the palm of her hand. She looked up, her red lips a tight line of worry, and told him, “Good-bye, professor.”  
“Farewell, Ariel.”  
She landed in an ankle-high pile of ashes, which shot back up into the narrow chimney and stung her mouth and eyes, causing her to cough. She was waving away tendrils of smoke when she stepped out of the fireplace to find Bellatrix, Narcissa and Voldemort dripping from head to toe in blood, each pointing a wand directly at her.  
She froze at the sight of the deadly weapons. She didn’t attempt to conceal the look of horror on her face as her eyes scanned the three wizards’ blood-soaked bodies, looking like they got out of a bloodbath with all their clothes on. Her hung mouth widened as her eyes drifted over to the blood splattered walls, the blood drenched floors or the towering pile of blood and gore standing in the corner.  
“Ariel.” Voldemort said in a friendly voice as he quickly stuffed his wand into his robes and walked through the shallow puddles of blood over to her. “What are you doing here?”  
“W-why…why is there…blood everywhere?” Ariel made out incomprehensively, her eyes transfixed on the scene before her, the color draining from her face.   
“I told you I had a meeting today,” he said.  
“D-did…the meeting…go bad?” She stammered.  
“No,” he replied simply. “It went…well, it went pretty good actually.” He waved at the carnage and said, with a dismissive laugh, “This is just how meetings usually go for me.”  
Ariel watched with a dazed expression on her face as Bellatrix air-mopped the floors clean and Narcissa washed the blood stains from the carpet with a flick of her wrist like they were simply two sisters tackling chores together rather than abating a murder scene. She almost didn’t hear Voldemort’s voice when he said to her, “I thought you’d be searching for housing right now.”  
Nagini swerved her massive body around her ankles, swishing the blood and staining the hem of her dress as it circled her, threateningly. She could almost hear the snake warn her, I wouldn’t try anything if I were you. Ariel snapped out of it long enough to tell him, “I wanted to see you.”  
He blinked at her, looking like nobody had ever said those words to him before. “Really?”  
“Yeah.” It felt like a lie. It tasted like a lie when it left her tongue. But for some reason, even as she stood on feet coated in giant blood, staring into the face of a man she knew would kill her with a smile on his hideous, noseless, lipless face should she fail to meet his expectations of her, she wanted to be there. Or rather, she knew she had to be there. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen each other for two days in a row. Thought we could change that.”  
Voldemort beamed at her, like it was the only thing he’d ever wanted to hear. “Great.” He said with a breathy laugh. “Let me clean all this first and,” (he looked down at his blood-caked robes) “Myself. And then, we can do…breakfast?”  
“Um, I’m not that hungry,” she confessed as she watched a sour-faced Bellatrix cast a water spell onto the ground, spraying the ground with her wand, and forcing the blood into a nearby balcony where it undoubtedly was pushed onto the property’s soil.   
“So, tea then?” He suggested.  
“Tea sounds…” She began, a waft of blood reached her mouth and coated her tongue. She could literally taste the metal in the air. “Lovely.”


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: Never

She waited for him in the garden. She sat at a round little patio table, watching two albino peacocks wander through the manicured backyard freely until eventually one of them got tired of being followed and attacked their companion for no discernible reason. Shrieks were made; talons were drawn. The squabble ended as soon as it started with one victorious and the other cut up, missing tuffs of feathers, red streaking the immaculate white body.   
Voldemort came out of the corner of her eye, using his wand to carry the same two matching teacups and teakettle from yesterday. The tea set assembled itself onto the table before de-animating itself in the center as he took his seat across from her, smiling.  
They reached for their cups at the same time, but Voldemort raised his for a toast. “To reunions.”   
Ariel tapped her cup into his. “To life.”  
“Would it be inappropriate to ask you,” he said after he took his first sip, “If you slept well last night?”  
She cut him an uncertain glance, but when she saw he was smiling, she said, “I did sleep well.”  
“And…Severus?”  
“Was a perfect gentleman.”  
He smiled, bringing the cup to his lipless mouth. “Good.” He sounded like he meant it. “You know, I never would have pictured you two together.” With a snicker, he added, “He hates children.”  
“I don’t know. He seems pretty fond of that…” She snapped her fingers, trying to jog her memory. “Shrine boy.”  
Voldemort started to laugh. “‘Shrine boy’. Merlin’s Beard,” He leaned in and told her conspiratorially, “You know, until you came, I thought about hiding the shrine while he was away at school. That way I could watch his face as he tried to find it without asking anybody if they seen it because how was he going to go around asking people if they’d seen his…” His sentence ended in a fit of snickers.   
“Leave the boy alone,” Ariel said, listlessly. “You know, I had a marble statue of my crush in my treasure room when I was his age.”  
“Yeah, and look where that got you,” he remarked.  
Ariel looked down at her hands, the steam from her cup wafting against her forehead as she searched through the words she wanted to say next.  
“You look…” Voldemort began. “Vexed.”  
“I am,” she confessed. She lifted her head and said, “Severus told me what you…wanted to ask me.”  
“Really?” He asked, somewhat surprised. “Hm, I didn’t expect him to tell you so soon. He usually dragggggs these things out for as long as he could.” He glanced at Troubled Ariel and said, “We don’t have to talk about this now.”  
“I think we should.”  
“Alright.” He said, setting his cup down and lifting his head to give her his undivided attention.   
Ariel didn’t hesitate. She looked him in the eye and said, “We both know that I can’t help you kill a child.”  
Voldemort wilted in his seat, looking mildly disappointed but unsurprised. “I know.” He said. He lifted his lips and forced out a smile. “And I respect your… (sigh) moral objections.”  
Ariel squinted at him. “Really?”  
“Yes.” He sighed, rolling his eyes, looking more disappointed with himself than with her. He glanced at her and upon noticing her baffled expression, he said, “I would never force you to do anything you didn’t want to do, Ariel.” With another roll of his eyes, he muttered, “God, I’m going soft.”   
Ariel squirmed in her seat, unsure of what to make of this conversation. It didn’t feel like a win. But then again, he wasn’t reaching for his wand, which laid idly against his saucer plate, and she wasn’t struck dead either like she had expected.   
“I don’t understand…” she whispered.  
“What’s there to understand?” He asked, blankly.   
“Everything!” She gaped. She felt suddenly unhinged. Sitting in this garden in this house of blood having morning tea with the world’s most diabolical wizard underneath an Indian summer sun pretending like they were mother and son. She looked up and saw Tom’s ghost dissipate from the table, leaving only the Dark Lord. She knew then and there she was a fool to think she could change him back into the boy she barely knew. With that, she abruptly got to her feet and said, “I gotta go.”  
She started towards the house, already in tears, when she felt Voldemort’s hand reach down and grab her by the arm. Next thing she knew, he was pulling her into his body to embrace her. She didn’t pull away, merely buried her face into his chest as he rested his chin on her crown, patting her on the back as she wept and wept and wept.

At some point, she woke up in a bed she didn’t recognize fully clothed with a heaviness weighing over her eyes and a pounding headache. The windows revealed the sun hadn’t moved much. It was still not yet evening.  
After a few minutes of blinking and trying to remember where she was, it occurred to her that she was still at Malfoy Manor. She looked down at the black silk blankets then over her shoulder to find, to her immense relief, that the bed she laid in was empty. She tried to look around the room but was impeded by the painful pulse in her forehead. She fell back into the pillows, with a groan.   
“Here,” said a voice.   
She opened one eye and discovered a glass of water floating in front of her. To the right, in a chair in the shadowy corner, sat Voldemort.  
“Thank you,” she rasped after she chugged the entire glass and set the empty cup on a nearby nightstand. She raised herself up and asked, “How long was I out for?”  
“Not long.” He replied, his chin sitting on top of his white fist, studying her.  
There was a long silence between them.  
“I know,” he began softly, twiddling his wand with his first two fingers, “This must be difficult for you.”  
Ariel didn’t say anything. Instead, she propped herself against the ultra-plush pillows, then turned her head all the way towards him, giving him a weak but heartfelt smile. Then, she pushed herself into the middle of the giant bed and gestured at him to join her.   
He smiled, locked the door with his wand, set it on the nightstand next to her empty glass and climbed into bed with her. She allowed him to rest his head against her chest, curling one arm around him as he cuddled into the crook of her warm body. For a moment, they merely held each other, pretending this wasn’t at all strange.  
“Why did you lock the door?” Ariel asked.  
“So, Bellatrix wouldn’t walk in, see us and try to kill you in a jealous rage,” He replied. Then with a laugh, he said, “She truly hates you.”  
“She knows I’m screwing Severus, right?” Ariel asked.  
“Yes, but I’m sure that doesn’t help your case with her. She despises him as well.”  
“Does she despise anybody that isn’t you?”   
“Everyone but her sister and her nephew it seems.” He said, moving his ear to her heartbeat. He listened for a while in indulgent silence then remarked, “This is nice.”  
“It is,” Ariel admitted, her thoughts once again drifting back to that boy in the cave whom she used to dream about, often in this very scenario, just the two of them in bed together, him resting his adorable little head into her chest while her fingers ran through his thick, black hair. Only now when her fingers reached for his head all she found was the cold touch of bare skull. She felt another crying fit come over her but she was too exhausted to produce anymore tears. Not for this man.  
“I know this is difficult for you,” Voldemort said after another stretch of silence. “I know I am not at all what you hoped I would be.”  
Ariel didn’t say anything. Enervation was taking over her and she felt like she was slipping back into another dreamless sleep.  
“But I hope,” he said his voice getting more distant and softer as her eyes got heavier, “You know, that I meant what I said back in the cave when I said that I would always love you.”  
“I know…” She slurred with hooded eyes.   
“And I want you to know…” He whispered as he lifted his head to look her in the eyes. “You were the best mother a bastard like me could ever ask for.”  
Ariel gave him a broad, sleepy smile then caressed his face with both hands and drew him in to plant a kiss on his sloppy forehead. “I love you, Tommy.” She said with a happy, drunken slur.  
“I love you too, mom.” He whispered, holding her head in his hands until the light slowly faded from her eyes and her body slumped backwards into the sea of softness.

The news of her death came in the form of no news. After that day, she was never mentioned again by the Dark Lord as if she had never existed to begin with.  
One night not long after she disappeared, when Draco and Snape were once again accosted by insomnia and they met up in his office to split a bottle of vampire wine Narcissa sent as a gesture of condolence, Draco raised his glass to the sky and said, “To Ariel.”  
Snape clinked his glass into Draco’s and said with an impassive face and wet eyes, “To Ariel, may she rest in power.” With that, the two of them took a giant swig from their glass and lapsed back into unbearable silence.  
At some point, a tipsy Draco looked up into Snape’s face to discover the man was sobbing quietly with a face that looked like it had lived a thousand years of misery. Heartbroken, Draco got up from his end of the table, walked over and curled his arms around the man’s neck like he used to do when he was a small child. He didn’t say a word as Snape sobbed all his grief into that hug. Even as he realized, with crystal shattering clarity, that he was done with this life. He was done giving loyalty to a heartless wizard. And he resolved, then and there, to never follow another one of Voldemort’s orders for as long as he should live.


	14. SURPRISE BITCHES

**Author's Note: "Surprise, bitches! Did you miss me?"**

**So, yeah, I decided to expand upon this fanfic because for whatever reason I can't get Snape and Ariel/ Voldemort and Ariel's story out of my head. But also, I won't lie, I was pretty mad at the original ending myself.**

Chapter Thirteen Part Two: That's My Mother, You Colossal Idiot

She waited for him in the garden. She sat at a round little patio table, watching two albino peacocks wander through the manicured backyard freely until eventually one of them got tired of being followed and attacked their companion for no discernible reason. Shrieks were made; talons were drawn. The squabble ended as soon as it started with one victorious and the other cut up, missing tufts of feathers, red streaking the immaculate white body.

Voldemort came out of the corner of her eye, using his wand to carry the same two matching teacups and teakettle from yesterday. The tea set assembled itself onto the table before de-animating itself in the center as he took his seat across from her, smiling.

They reached for their cups at the same time, but Voldemort raised his cup for a toast. "To reunions."

Ariel tapped her cup into his.

"Would it be inappropriate to ask you," he said after he took his first sip, "If you slept well last night?"

She cut him an uncertain glance, but when she saw he was smiling, she said, "I did sleep well."

"And…Severus?"

"Was a perfect gentleman."

He smiled, bringing the cup to his lipless mouth. "Good." He sounded like he meant it. "You know, I never would have pictured you two together." With a snicker, he added, "He _hates_ children."

"I don't know. He seems pretty fond of that…" She snapped her fingers, trying to jog her memory. "Shrine boy."

Voldemort started to laugh. "'Shrine boy'. Merlin's Beard," He leaned in and told her conspiratorially, "You know, until you came, I thought about hiding the shrine while he was away at school. That way I could watch his face as he tried to find it without asking anybody if they have seen it because how was he going to go around asking people if they'd seen his Harry Potter shrine?" His sentence ended in a fit of snickers.

"Leave the boy alone," Ariel said, listlessly. "You know, I had a marble statue of my crush in my treasure room when I was his age."

"Yeah, and look where that got you," he remarked.

Ariel looked down at her hands, the steam from her cup wafting against her forehead as she searched through the words she wanted to say next.

"You look…" Voldemort began. "Vexed."

"I am," she confessed. She lifted her head and said, "Severus told me what you…wanted to ask me."

"Really?" He asked, somewhat surprised. "Hm, I didn't expect him to tell you so soon. He usually dragggggs these things out for as long as he could." He glanced at Troubled Ariel and said, "We don't have to talk about this now."

"I think we should."

"Alright." He said, setting his cup down and lifting his head to give her his undivided attention.

Ariel didn't hesitate. She looked him in the eye and said, "We both know that I can't help you kill a child."

Voldemort wilted in his seat, looking mildly disappointed but unsurprised. "I know." He said. He lifted his lips and forced out a smile. "And I respect your… (sigh) moral objections."

Ariel squinted at him. "Really?"

"Yes." He sighed, rolling his eyes, looking more disappointed with himself than with her. He glanced at her and upon noticing her baffled expression, he said, "I would never force you to do anything you didn't want to do, Ariel." With another roll of his eyes, he muttered, "God, I'm going soft."

Ariel squirmed in her seat, unsure of what to make of this conversation. It didn't feel like a win. But then again, he wasn't reaching for his wand, which laid idly against his saucer plate, and she wasn't struck dead either like she had expected.

"Is something wrong?" He asked, his voice soft with concern.

Her mouth fluttered open but no sound came out. He waited, watching her struggle to find the right words, but then the sound of footfalls approaching made him lift his eyes. It was Narcissa. "My Lord, Fenrir is here to see you."

"Shit. I forgot I scheduled that with him today." He said, pushing himself up out of the chair. To Ariel, he said apologetically, "I'll be right back. This won't take long."

Ariel watched him disappear inside the house. When he was gone, she turned her attention to Narcissa who stood by, waiting for her command.

"You don't have to stand there. You can sit down with me if you want." She offered.

"That's very kind of you," Narcissa replied with a small bow before she took the empty chair across from her. Ariel lifted the tea kettle but Narcissa declined with a small shake of her head. "Thank you but I'm not much of a tea person."

"Neither am I," Ariel admitted, peering down into her barely touched cup with a heavy sigh. A small silence past by them which Ariel interrupted by asking, "Got any booze?"

* * *

Fenrir leered out of the glass sliding door, a salacious smile curled into his furry face as he watched Ariel talk to Narcissa. By the time Voldemort emerged into the kitchen, he was tittering with dark fantasies.

"Good morning Fenrir," Voldemort greeted with business-like politeness.

"Good morning to you, Lord Voldemort." He returned as they shook hands and headed to the living room to conduct business. "Though I can see, you are having a great morning already." He let out a knowing laugh then asked. "How much did that little chew toy set you back?"

Voldemort halted mid-step. "Pardon me?"

Fenrir wagged his furry chin to the backyard bearing a razor-sharp-tooth grin. "Don't be bashful, my lord." He said with a wink. "We all have weaknesses. But I'll tell you right now. Give me a couple of days alone with the red-head and I'll swear my allegiance to you right now."

A blinding rage threatened to pour out of the Dark Lord but he managed to suppress it long enough to join in on Fenrir as the werewolf chuckled salaciously.

"You think," Voldemort said in-between a wide-mouth laugh. "She's my sex worker?" Voldemort continued laughing darkly as Fenrir's face slacked with confusion. "That's hilarious! Ha. Ha. Ha. Ha!"

A split second later, the mirth in Voldemort's face died, replaced by a rage that contorted and scrunched his face. Fenrir's face paled instantly as he felt his body being bound by invisible forces, reducing his muscular body into a rigid heap. The air in his lungs slowly started to seep out of him, both from fear and from the Dark Lord's will, and he felt his throat constrict the little oxygen he had left. He gasped for air, his face reddening as he slowly and painfully began to suffocate. He could only watch as Voldemort drew closer to him and told him, to his everlasting horror, "That red-head is my mother, you colossal fucking idiot."

"I thought—" Fenrir choked out but Voldemort interrupted him with a Cruciatus Curse, sending an electric current of agony into the werewolf's body, unlike anything he had ever felt before.

* * *

Narcissa winked at Ariel before she pulled a half-drank bottle of wine from her robe's pocket and poured a generous serving into the two teacups. They toasted silently before they both tossed back the contents, laughing as they coughed up fire and poison.

"Oh, my cod!" Ariel cried out, in-between dry coughs and shudders. "This is some good shit."

"It should be. It is 200-year-old vampire wine after all." Narcissa informed with faint pride as she poured herself a second cup.

"Oh, this is vampire wine? No wonder I already feel light-headed." Ariel replied with a giggle.

Narcissa smiled into her cup but Ariel noticed when she raised the cup to her lips her eyes creased with quiet despair.

"You have a beautiful home," Ariel said, wanting so badly to comfort this woman who carried sadness with her like a piece of jewelry she never took off and to distract herself from the growing dread in her stomach.

"Thank you," Narcissa replied. "We inherited it from my husband's parents. It had been in his family for over fifteen generations."

"It doesn't look like an old house at all," Ariel replied, turning her head towards the grand mansion which stood so sharp, tall and proud against the cloudy sky it looked like it was turning its nose at the heavens itself. Then she turned her head to Narcissa and said, "I would love a tour sometime."

"I can give you one now if you want," Narcissa offered calmly though inwardly she was eager to finally get a chance at some alone time with this creature.

Desperate for adventure, Ariel hopped out of her chair, grabbed her mug of wine, and said with a sincere smile, "I would love that."


	15. Prison Break

Chapter Fourteen: Prison Break

Narcissa took Ariel's teacup full of wine from her then lightly grabbed her by the wrist, transporting them from the garden to inside the mansion. As the witch expected, Ariel hadn't acquired the leg muscles yet for apparition and crash-landed on the wooden floorboards. She helped her up then handed her back her cup which hadn't spilled a drop.

"Thanks," Ariel said sheepishly as she took a swig from her cup to dull the pain in her backside from where she fell. She glanced around their new location and knew at once Narcissa chose to start the tour with the in-home laboratory. Her eyes widened with delight spotted shelves upon shelves of jarred ingredients all of which were kept labeled, alphabetized, kept evenly apart, and, most impressively, completely dust-free. "Oh, my cod…Your lab is…gorgeous." Ariel punctuated her awe with a sharp gasp for her blue eyes found a giant golden cauldron sitting against the corner. Her heart nearly exploded from her chest as she drew closer and discovered, "Oh, my fucking COD! Is this the Deluxe Circe Self-Stirrer 5000?!"

"Yes," Narcissa informed with a closed-lipped smile as Ariel dashed over to the cauldron, with the zeal of a child who spotted a coveted toy.

Ariel felt delirious standing before such a creation, who captured her wheezing reflection in its smooth golden base. "Oh, my cod…" She ran her hand against the cauldron's rim. She couldn't help but let out a high-pitched squeal at the soft feel. "Ahhh!"

Her excited scream was heard by Bellatrix who was two doors down, taking her jealous rage out on a room full of red-wigged mannequins. She apparated herself to the laboratory to investigate, asking her sister when she arrived, "What happened? Are you okay?" Narcissa nodded at Ariel, who had crouched down to her knees to embrace the base of the cauldron, resting her face against the fat golden belly, whispering, "I love you."

Narcissa gave confused Bellatrix a closed-lipped grin and explained, "Our esteemed guest wanted a tour of the estate."

"Ah," Bellatrix said, giving her sister a knowing smile before she turned her attention to Ariel and said, "You know, Ariel, I almost forgot to congratulate you on your potion maker's publication."

Ariel might have kept on shamelessly whispering her love to the cauldron had Bellatrix's comment not piqued her vanity. Flattered, Ariel stood up and curtsied at the witch, saying, "Thank you! I couldn't tell you how many times I submitted to the magazine before they finally accepted something from me."

"Well," Bellatrix said with a wide-toothed smile as she took the bottle of wine from Narcissa, walked over to Ariel and refilled the teacup that sat beside her on the floor, "Cheers to you on becoming an official potions-maker."

Ariel clinked her cup into the width of the wine bottle before she swallowed the whole of the content. Within seconds, she felt the blood in her body warm and her brain cells start to buzz pleasantly.

Bellatrix was refilling her teacup when she asked, "So tell me about this creation of yours. What does it do? And what inspired you to make it?"

"Aw, thank you for asking. It's called the Voice Disguiser Potion. And, basically, it'll change your voice into any speaking creature so long as you have their spit." Ariel laughed a little too loudly when she explained, "See, I got the idea because…You see, a hundred years—wait, no a hundred and fifty years ago? Whatever. Back in the day, I used to hang out with pirates quite a lot. And you know pirates. Fun as hell but damned if those drunk bastards don't know how to behave. So anyway, one of my friends, Jack, got arrested for piracy—which is a bum rap in my opinion. I mean, how come its imperialism when politicians pillage and plunder countries for their sugar and rum but it's piracy when a bunch of drunks on their own boat does the same thing?"

"That's terrible." Narcissa agreed. "Was your friend…?"

"Oh, that Wiley Bastard got out fine without my help," Ariel assured. "But it did make me ask myself if only there was a way for me to lend my non-mermaid friend my magical voice so he could talk his way out of getting wrongfully executed. Or you know, prank each other. And that's when it hit me. So, to make a long story short, I spent the last…oh…century perfecting the formula? Finally figured out the ratio last year. And bam! You are looking at a published potions maker."

"Wait," Narcissa spoke up slowly. "So, this potion not only disguises your voice but it can transfer magical properties over to the drinker?"

Ariel nodded, proudly. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Bellatrix and Narcissa exchanged befuddled glances before Narcissa said to Ariel, "Have you…used it?"

"To prank people?" Ariel inquired blankly.

"To break people out of prison," Bellatrix said.

"Oh, yeah," Ariel said as she pushed herself to her feet. She walked over to Bellatrix to refill her cup, saying as the witch poured the bottle, "I actually had to help break out the same friend." She laughed when she raised the cup to her purpled lips and explained, "He got caught summoning the Kraken. Again." She shook her head after she took her sip. "I told that idiot not to but you know how hard-headed pirates can be."

"Where was your friend sentenced?" Bellatrix asked, almost breathlessly.

"Azkaban."

The two sisters exchanged another set of bewildered glances. How could this be? They asked another silently. Is it really too good to be true?

"You broke your friend out of Azkaban?" Narcissa asked.

"Uh-huh."

"Without the news finding out?" Bellatrix asked, nearly dumbfounded.

"It's not that hard," Ariel replied. "The dementors at that place are dumber than jellyfish. Plus, most of the guards there aren't paid enough to check on the prisoners every hour like they're supposed to."

Narcissa gave her sister a look asking her to confirm this fact.

Bellatrix nodded. "It's true. I used to go whole days without being checked on by a guard."

Narcissa whipped her head at Ariel with big, wet brown eyes. She thought about bribing her with the Deluxe Circe Self-Stirrer 5000. If that wouldn't work, she would've given her all the gold in her Gringott's account. She would've given her any bit of jewelry, clothing, her loyalty, her life, anything the siren asked for. But looking into Ariel's blushing face, her eyes soft with tipsiness, she realized then that now was the best time to appeal to the woman's recklessness.

"I call bullshit," Narcissa said.

"I agree," Bellatrix said. "There's no way you can break someone out of Azkaban that easily without being detected."

The content from Ariel's face faded into unmitigated cockiness. "Wanna bet?"

Narcissa raised the nearly empty bottle of wine and declared, "A bottle of wine says you can't break my husband out of Azkaban."

"What's your husband's name?"

"Lucius Malfoy."

Ariel scoffed. "You better stick a fresh one in some ice then. Because I'm going to have that guy back home for you in thirty minutes or less."

Narcissa smiled at her, then at her sister, then back at Ariel. She extended her hand to the pseudo-siren, giving her a cursory shake as she said, "It's a bet."

Ariel dropped her hand only to find Bellatrix's hand slipping into hers a second later. She glanced at the dark-haired witch, who told her, half-mockingly "Hang on, Lady Ariel." With that, they disappeared from the laboratory in a dizzying wind.

* * *

Moments later, they were on Azkaban grounds being pelted at by strong winds and freezing ocean spray. Ariel managed to lock her knees in time and landed on dead, frosted grass upright. Before she was the massive, black towering pit of despair otherwise known as Azkaban. Ariel craned her head to look for the top of the prison but it disappeared in the stormy clouds above. She then glanced at Bellatrix who had her arms folded across her chest, smirking. An hourglass dangled out of her robe's pocket swinging violently in the blustery air.

Determined, Ariel made her way to the formidable entrance. A sixteen-hundred-meter iron door covered in spikes, bearing a sign that said WELCOME TO AZKABAN THE UNHAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH. Unsure of what to do, she cleared her throat then cried out in her loudest voice, "I'm here to visit Lucius Malfoy!"

A few moments of silence past before one of the iron doors cracked open. A dementor came out to greet her, its cold faceless visage peering down at her like it wanted nothing more than to gobble her soul whole.

"I am Lucius Malfoy's attorney and I need to speak with him at once," Ariel ordered, authoritatively as she shivered from the torrents of gelid water raining down on her.

The dementor did nothing for a while, merely floated there, ominously. As if trying to determine her lies from truth. But she was flush with liquid courage and locked eyes with the faceless ghoul, who eventually turned around and, to Bellatrix's delight, led her inside the prison.

Ariel followed the creature for what felt like an eternity through the cold, unwelcoming corridors. She had to keep her eyes focused on the back of the dementor's raggedy robes as she felt the dead-eyes of every prisoner they passed follow them and burn against her soaked body. She wasn't afraid of their leers more than she was terrified by their haunted wraith-like faces. None of them even bothered to catcall her. They said nothing, knew nothing, dreamt of nothing but suffering.

Eventually, the dementor halted and angled itself at a cell. Ariel peered inside. A man with scraggly white-blonde hair laid in a heap against the concrete floor on his bed which was nothing more than a thin, uncomfortable-looking mattress and a small threadbare blanket, too little or thin to bring any real warmth, especially in such a chilling place. He didn't even lift his head when she stuck her face in-between the metal bars to get a closer look at him. His face was obscured by the shadowy cell.

Ariel turned to the dementor and told it, "Open the cell."

Slowly, the dementor compiled but even when the cell opened with a creak the prisoner didn't show signs of noticing them. It wasn't until Ariel stepped inside and told the dementor to give them privacy, did the man turn his head to address her.

He was so bony and pale he was looked like a skeleton, swallowed up in his black and white striped uniform. "Who are you?" He had a voice like broken glass.

Ariel shushed him and glanced over her shoulder, making sure the corridor was empty before she turned to him and said, "My name's Ariel and I am here to win a bet."

* * *

Bellatrix hummed patiently while she watched the sand pass through her hourglass. The siren still had ten minutes to lose the bet.

A sound broke her from her daydreaming and she snapped her neck from her hourglass to find Ariel calmly walking out of the prison entrance dragging her skittish-looking brother-in-law by the elbow.

She waited for alarms to go off. For the angry voices of guards to break the air. But none of that happened. And Bellatrix unleashed a wicked laugh as Ariel and Lucius walked over to her.

"Told you it's not that hard to break out of Azkaban," Ariel said with a bratty smile as she laced her fingers with Lucius's and reached for Bellatrix's hand.

"Well, I stand corrected," Bellatrix replied with a cat-like grin as their fingers intertwined, readying themselves for departure. "I got to admit I _severely_ underestimate you."


	16. Prisoner of Azkaban

Chapter Fifteen: The Prisoner of Azkaban

Voldemort lost track of time. He didn't even realize Ariel had left the garden until Greyback had lost control of his bowels which was usually around this time that he found the task of torture tedious. When he idly glanced out into the garden to discover the small white round table was empty, he told Greyback, as the werewolf writhed in his own waste against the kitchen floor, "Today's your lucky day, Greyback." He planted his blood-speckled foot onto Greyback's throat and pressed down until he felt the man's Adam's Apple flatten under his weight. "I've decided not to kill you. Better yet, I've decided not to tell Ariel of the horrible things you said about her."

Greyback could only whimper submissively as Voldemort lifted his weight from the man's throat. Greyback gasped, coughed, trembled, then gaped as painful oxygen rushed to his bruised lungs. Voldemort crouched down, slowly, relishing the fear and agony that surged within the werewolf's face as he desperately, but ineffectively, tried to thank the Dark Lord for sparing his life.

"Know this," He said, hanging his head above Greyback's terrified eye line, his face dark with guaranteed violence. "From this day forth, you will serve me. With nothing less than absolute devotion."

"Yes—yes, my lord." Greyback stuttered in a croaky voice of someone who just had their throat stomped on. "I swear—I swear."

"Oh, I know you swear. Because make one mistake—one tiny mistake and…" He chuckled darkly then told a terrified Greyback, "Well, let's just say. If you think I'm scary…wait 'til you meet her."

Greyback nodded vigorously with tears in his beady eyes, looking so utterly frightened it brought a smile to Voldemort's face.

"Good," Voldemort whispered, frowning. He rose to a standing position and told him, in a harsh, unforgiving voice, "Leave."

Greyback nodded, then bowing frequently, thanking the dark wizard profusely as he dug inside his robes for his wand.

Voldemort didn't watch him leave, his head was turned to the garden, wondering with small worry, did she leave?

No, he argued inwardly. Ariel doesn't leave without saying goodbye. Besides, Narcissa would have…

Then it dawned on him. The laboratory.

* * *

Narcissa paced the laboratory a thousand times in their absence. Her racing heart bashed against the inside of her chest as her mind circled back to every possible worst-case scenario: What if Lucius gets caught? What if they all get caught? What if she made a critical error and got them all killed? And what fate worse than death would await her and her family should something happen to Ariel? She white-knuckled the neck of an unopened bottle of wine, convinced at any second, death would come for her and everyone she loved.

Just when she thought her heart could take the wait no longer—a small tornado appeared in the center of the room. And from that small cyclone appeared Ariel, Bellatrix and, to her heart-pounding wonder, Lucius.

She almost dropped the bottle when she saw him but Ariel swiped it from her trembling hands with the unconcealed glee, saying, as she walked by the stunned witch, "Yoink!"

He looked so withered and pitiful like a deer during the food-barren winter months. All his dignities, his pride, were gone.

Then they locked eyes and for a moment neither of them moved. They merely stood there, staring at the other as if frozen by their incredulity. They were breathless with nerve-rattling fear, insurmountable joy, tremendous agony, and heart-pounding relief.

You wouldn't have guessed this couple didn't believe in public displays of affection the way they rushed to another with arms opened wide. Ariel awed loudly as the spouses shamelessly showered the other's face with a thousand kisses. Even Bellatrix, who never cared for Lucius, couldn't help by be endeared by the utter happiness in her little sister's face as she cried tears of joy and clutched her husband close, whispering, "I never thought I'd see you again."

"Nor did I," Lucius croaked out with a convulsive sob as he squeezed Narcissa until his weak arms shook. He buried his head in her hair and whispered, "I missed you so…"

"I missed you too…" Narcissa murmured, blinking away tears as she tightened her embrace, afraid that if she ever let go that would be the last thing she ever did.

"We should give the married couple some privacy," Bellatrix said to Ariel, feigning annoyance at their affections.

Ariel nodded. She turned to leave, telling Bellatrix as she headed for the door, "Grab that other bottle. And we'll go find—" Her sentence was cut short when she discovered Voldemort was standing on the threshold, silently observing the four of them.

Ariel was the only one who didn't freeze under his impenetrable gaze. Bellatrix didn't dare breathe, let alone move. Narcissa and Lucius clung to another, refusing to let go, but didn't dare stand as the Dark Lord's eyes scanned over them with an unreadable expression.

"Heyy, perfect timing!" Ariel remarked as she brandished her newly-won wine bottle with a deep-purple-stained smile. "Look what I got." She stepped towards him adding mischievously, "Figured we could poet-up our tea time."

He was slow to pull his gaze away from the quaking Malfoys but when he did eventually turn to Ariel, they changed instantly. No longer indecipherable, he regarded her and her bottle with the round-eyed patience and the closed-lipped grin of someone who indulging their obviously intoxicated friend.

"Sounds splendid," he replied his voice so uncharacteristically airy and warm it sent a chill down Lucius's spine. He looked up at Bellatrix and told the stony-faced witch, "Come along and join us, Bellatrix. We should give the husband and wife some precious alone time." Bellatrix compiled without hesitation, following Ariel into the hallway. Voldemort lingered in the doorway and said, without breaking eye contact with Lucius, "Welcome back home, Lucius. I can't wait to hear the details of your daring escape."

With that, the Dark Lord left but Lucius and Narcissa waited, holding absolutely still, until the familiar sounds of apparition winds told them they were alone and, temporarily, safe from his wrath.

"What did he mean by 'I can't wait to hear the details to your daring escape'?" Lucius asked, desperate with fear. When Narcissa didn't answer quickly enough, he asked, "Did he not send the drunk damsel for me?"

"No, I sent her," Narcissa admitted, tearfully, as his fear became her own.

"Nar, have you lost your mind?" Lucius said in a terrified whisper. His pale face lost the little bit of color it had at that moment. He hoped against hope that the Dark Lord had forgiven him for his trespasses at last summer. He thought the red-headed woman was his gesture of clemency. But if he didn't send for him, then that means the Dark Lord still hadn't accepted his failure to retrieve the prophecy. Which only meant one thing. "You've doomed us both."

Narcissa shook her tear-streaked face. Her eyes were red but resolute. "No, we're not. Trust me."

"Nar…"

"Trust me."

"But what am I supposed to say when he asks me how I escaped?"

"Let Ariel do the talking."

Lucius waited for her to explain but she never did. Instead, she got up, retrieved a set of clean clothes that she hid inside the Deluxe Circe Self-Stirrer 5000, handed them to him and told him, her fingers brushed against his pale backhand, "We should go. You know how much he hates waiting."

Lucius rested the clothes on his lap and leaned forward to give, what he believed in his bones to be, the last hug he and his beloved would ever engage in.

* * *

The Malfoys eventually made it to the kitchen where they overheard the last bit of a story Ariel was telling:

"…So, I wake up. The skeleton monkeys are everywhere. Jack's making out with Cthulhu. I got a cake in my hair. My hand is still stuck inside a tortoise's shell. And I just turn to the high priestess and say, 'If this is how you celebrate summer equinox, I gotta come back for Saturnalia!'"

Lucius and Narcissa watched in befuddlement as the Dark Lord threw his head back and unleashed a hearty laugh into the sky. Crows fled their nests in swarms, camouflaging the dull blueish grey sky with their black feathers. Lucius turned his head to ask Narcissa, who the hell is this drunk woman that the Dark Lord looks at like she's his dearest, but he only watched as his wife bravely emerged into the backyard. He followed her, his chest constricting the closer he stepped towards the white table. He overheard the Dark Lord, who pretended not to notice their presence, tell the red-headed woman, "You never told me you used to hang around with pirates."

"You never asked," Ariel said with a sly wink as she dipped her head to steal a sip from her teacup. "Besides, you were way too young to hear about my pirate days."

"Young?" Lucius blurted out, unhinged by the surrealness of the scene: this red-headed woman, who looked young enough to date his son, talking to the Dark Lord like she knew him for years, sharing a drink and a laugh with the man like he wasn't the most dangerous apex predator to walk the face of the Earth, and most bizarrely, all the while Bellatrix sat by without so much as a hint of jealousy in her eyes, like all of this was normal.

His outburst caused the three seated adults to turn their attention to him and Narcissa who was quietly conjoining seats for them.

"Lucius," Voldemort said in a lukewarm voice that Lucius knew, from a previous life, often foreshadowed the calm before the raging storm. "Sit."

He looked to his wife but she was already pulling her chair beside Bellatrix's, her eyes averted to the glass surface of the round table. With his heart beating in his feet, he forced himself to the table. The Dark Lord's gaze scorched his soul.

"So, tell me," Voldemort began slowly his voice speciously pleasant. Lucius opened his mouth to speak but Voldemort cut him at the wick. "Not you." He then swerved his head to Ariel and said, sweetly, "Ariel. Tell me. What happened in the thirty minutes I was gone?"

"Well, I—"

"Start from the beginning." Voldemort interrupted encouragingly. "Whose idea was it to start day drinking?"

Ariel sniggered. "Mine."

"Any special reason?"

"Because…I'm a hundred and ninety-nine-years-old and I can do what I want?"

Voldemort gave her an amused chuckle. "Fair enough. And what happened after that?"

"Well, I asked Narcissa for a tour of the house. And she took me to the laboratory—which by the way—why didn't you tell me they had a Deluxe Circe Self-Stirrer 5000?!"

"It must have slipped my mind," Voldemort replied patiently. "And then what happened?"

"Well, I was telling Narcissa and Bellatrix about my potion recipe that got published and then that lead to me telling them the story about how I broke my friend Jack out of Azkaban last year and these naysayers—" Ariel turned her head at Bellatrix and Narcissa who was secretly holding each other's hand under the table. "Tried saying I was bullshitting about being able to break someone out of Azkaban without setting off the alarms." She turned her head back to Voldemort and said with a scoff, "Like it's that hard to get past a bunch of floating smoke clouds in dishrags, anyway. Pfft."

Voldemort gave her a broad smile. "I've been saying that for years."

"Right?" Ariel agreed. "But yeah, anyway, I walked in, grabbed Lucy over here, and then I was out like the wind." She one-shoulder shrugged the ending, like what she did was as commonplace as closing a door.

Bellatrix and the Malfoys waited with bated breath as Voldemort digested her story. Though all of it was true, it wasn't a matter of getting him to believe in you as much as it was about the truth pleasing him. Sometimes, it was just as bad to lie to the Dark Lord as it was to be the bearer of bad news.


	17. Mama's Boy

Chapter Sixteen: Mama's Boy

"Well," Voldemort said through a clenched, toothy smile despite the seething rage that embroiled his insides. He despised Narcissa so fiercely in that moment. How profoundly he wanted to make an example out of her by turning her husband into a widower. Or go really overboard and turn Draco into an orphan. Delicious, violent images swirled in the back of his mind. His wand burned eagerly against his thigh. But he remained still, smiling, listening calmly to Ariel as she told her prison break tale. Because if he gave in to the temptation, he realized to his chagrin, Ariel would freak out. Look how terrified she was when she first arrived this morning. Remember the sickness in her face when you told her who you are? She's terrified you. And, who could blame her? But if he wanted her back in his life—which of course I want her in back in my life—who wouldn't want a relationship with the closest thing they've ever had to a—he berated himself into not finishing that thought. Look at you. Little Tommy wants a mommy…So, what if I do? Greyback may be a moron but he wasn't wrong when he said we all have our weaknesses. Stupid, loveless childhood. This would be so much simpler if I didn't have that fragment of a soul left. Once she finished her story, he cleared his throat once, turned his attention away from Ariel, and told the terrified three, with forced placidity, "That's all I wanted to know."

With that, Voldemort rose to his feet and said, "Come along Ariel."

"Where are we going?"

"Oh, I thought we could take tea time to my place." He replied, off-handedly, as if he wasn't fantasying about gutting Lucius like a fish. He hissed for Nagini then added, "That way we could give Bella, Narcissa and, heh, Lucy a chance to get reacquainted. As a family."

Thirsty for more adventure, Ariel hopped out of her seat, swiped the unopened bottle from the ground, and told the terrified witches, "It was nice drinking with you two." Then told ashen-faced Lucius, "Enjoy your first day out of the big house!" She skipped over to Voldemort and Nagini, took his waiting elbow, and disappeared with them in a flash.

It wasn't until they were gone did Lucius cry out, "Okay. What the hell was all that?" He turned to his wife and sister-in-law and demanded, "Since when does the Dark Lord have a friend? And who the hell was that woman? Why does she treat him like their equals? And why the hell haven't either of you—?"

"Oh, for Merlin's sake. Shut up, Lucius!" Bellatrix snapped as she and Narcissa simultaneously slumped into their seats, emotionally and physically drained at having barely survived another day with the Dark Lord.

* * *

Pain drives sane men to do desperate things. And Dumbledore didn't consider himself anything close to sane.

He hadn't slept in days. His decaying hand wouldn't let him. Every day, that rotting hand grew blacker, sicker, bonier. Some days he would wake up to the smell of Death choking him out of a sound sleep and he would look down at his hand and find it laughing at him. You arrogant old man, it would sneer at him. Sometimes it would be in Tom's voice. More often, it sounded like Aberforth's. His father's.

Today, he was so delirious from pain he could have sworn he heard Ariana's sweet little voice calling for him.

It was enough to send him there even though he had scoured every inch of that ramshackle shack over the years.

But he was desperate. And that's what sent him there. To the old Gaunt place.

He was in the wine cellar, cradling his wretched hand against his side, while his wand-bearing hand waved over every inch of the walls, searching, hoping, for a sign of disturbance when the sound of footsteps landing from above snapped him out of his thoughts.

His heart stopped. He's _here_.

* * *

They rematerialized in a bare, dimly lit room. Ariel was struck immediately by the barrenness of the place: Aside from a meager chair that sat against the back wall beside an unused fireplace, like a squatter, everything about the place indicated that it was long abandoned. Cobwebs stretched from the ceiling to the floor in thick streams. No paintings or pictures decorated the walls. It was a decidedly unloved place. She felt a chill swim through her veins when she looked down at her bare feet discovered they trampled on years' worth of dust.

A fresh ray of light crossed over her toes and she lifted her head to find Voldemort had opened a side door. He held it open for her. "C'mon, drunky." He said with good-natured humor. "I want to show you something." He stood beside a grime-covered window. She peered out of it to discover he had opened a door to a backyard where a bunch of white stones stood a waist-height like they were teeth plucked out of the mouths of giants and stabbed into the ground.

"What is that?" She said, stepping forward to get a better view.

"It's a graveyard."

As he expected, she had never seen a graveyard before. Her eyes shone with curiosity as she strolled through the door.

Four plain tombstones awaited them in a single row with the exception of one lonely and noticeably smaller slab which hung in the back of the lot by a craggily oak tree in a grassless plot of land that couldn't be reached by the sun, like an outcast. The ones closest to the house were hidden by patches of tall grass, their names and their years on Earth defaced by rain and cruel passage of time.

"Wow," she breathed, unable to pry her eyes away from the dingy gray slabs. "So, the dead are…just buried here?"

"Yes."

It was such a bizarre concept to the former mermaid, whose species, as her people liked to joke, were considerate enough to turn into seafoam once they died, thus sparing the bereaved the responsibility, and torment, of having to care for the dead. She couldn't imagine her corpse spending the eternity, entombed, in the cold ground like that. But even in her unease, she found the custom fascinating. "Wow…"

"Ariel, I'd like to introduce you to my family." Voldemort said as he gestured to the first row and informing her as they strolled by, "This was my maternal grandmother. This was my maternal grandfather. This was my maternal uncle…" Then they veered towards the tree, towards the little square grave marker, which bore only the name 'MEROPE' and the numbers 1907-1926 and he told her, "And this…was… my mother."

Ariel froze before the dead woman's grave. Guilt filled her veins and coagulated her bloodstream the longer they stood there, in silence. Their heads bowed slightly as if lost in prayer. Ariel wondered if her ghost was there, in that graveyard, watching them. She looked over her shoulder but saw nothing. She turned her attention back to the tombstone, which she couldn't help but notice was better maintained than the other graves.

"Me-rope?" Ariel asked, after the moment of silence had passed. "Mer-op?"

"Mer-o-pee." He corrected, gently.

"Merope." Even with her lovely voice, she couldn't improve such an ugly name. Tough break, she thought sadly. But then again, what's an ugly name in compared to forever being known as the woman who gave birth to the darkest wizard who ever lived?

* * *

Dumbledore waited until he heard the footfalls disappear from the living room to apparate, camouflaging himself to blend into the walls. He pointed his invisible wand at the window, his aim set on the back of Voldemort's head.

* * *

"Mom…" Voldemort said, his voice as gentle as the wind. "I'd like you to meet…" He gestured to Ariel with an open, flat palm and said something he wanted to say for decades, "Mom."

She blinked at him, stupefied. Was she shitfaced or did he really call her 'mom'?

"Ariel, I lied the other night when I said you were my hero." He said, drawing closer to her as her bottom lip trembled and her eyes brimmed with tears. "Because the truth is, whenever I thought of you over the years, it wasn't hero-worship. Whenever I thought of you, I would think about how…" He caressed her wet face with one hand without her flinching. "I would've given anything to be your son. To be your real son."

"I would've—I would've—I would've…if I could've…" She said through croaky sobs as she held his calloused hand against her soft face.

He gently pulled her into a hug and told her hairline as she wept uncontrollably into his robes, "I know." He rubbed her convulsing back as she cried out years of regret, loneliness, and heartbreak, telling her, "I know."

"I love you, Tom."

"I love you too, mom."

They didn't stand there holding each other long. At some point, Nagini came out and warned him, "Sssssomeone's here." Voldemort lifted his head and peered through the streaky window. He didn't see anything but he sensed what Nagini meant. Enemies were near. Too near. He pulled himself away from Ariel and told her, "Sleep tight, drunky." Before she could respond, he pinched a nerve in her neck. Instantly, her body went limp and her eyelids slammed shut. He carefully laid her down on the dirt ground, propped her head against her cloth bag for a pillow, then ordered Nagini to protect her. The cobra compiled, slithering over to her side, laying its body lengthwise against sleeping Ariel, who snored peacefully against the welcoming earth.

Voldemort stormed inside the shack with his wand drawn. He stood in the doorway, waiting for an attack to come. His eyes darted across every inch of the room, searching for this foe. Minutes passed. "Reveal yourself," he ordered the empty room.

Nothing happened.

Voldemort inhaled deeply then smiled at the ceiling. The air smelled faintly of lemon drops and mothballs. "Ah, Albus." He said with a malicious smile as he slowly walked out of the doorway. "You just don't learn old man, do you?"

More nothingness.

His lipless mouth curled wider, revealing two sets of small, sharp teeth. "How's your hand doing, Albus?" He asked with a throaty chuckle. With mock sympathy, he added, "From what I've heard…it's looking awful." He pouted then let out a snake-like laugh as he taunted, "Ah…but I guess that's what you get for taking things that don't belong to you."

Silence was his only reply.

Voldemort grinned. "You better hurry up and strike while you can, old man. We both know you're on borrowed time anyway."

At last, Dumbledore stepped out of the wall and appeared with his wand raised. "I'm not the only one on borrowed time, Tom. Or should I say…mama's boy."

Voldemort let out a deranged cackle as the two of them stared the other down, waiting for the other to make the first strike. Then his eyes narrowed. "Enough chin wagging."

His wand exploded with blue light but Dumbledore blocked it and the curse ricocheted into the ceiling, leaving behind a massive hole. Voldemort struck again, whipping his arm across his chest furiously as he launched another curse which Dumbledore, effortlessly, repelled, sending the beam of light into a wall where it shook the house to its core.

Dust and bits of debris fell to the ground as the shack trembled weakly.

"Too weak to fight back, old man?" Voldemort snarled as he snapped his wrist and sent a blinding force of white at Dumbledore's chest which the wizard managed to block with a shield of blue. "Or is dying making you soft?" Dumbledore didn't respond and, infuriated, Voldemort bellowed, conjuring his hate into a blinding bolt of lightning.

Dumbledore batted the lightning bolt away, back towards him. Voldemort had to leap out of the way to avoid being hit and the white lightning shot out of the house, into the backyard, where it made contact with the trunk of the tree that Ariel slept beneath, leaving behind a vicious, gaping, smoldering tear.

* * *

A thwacking noise jerked Ariel out of dreamless sleep. She opened her blurry eyes to find she was on the ground. Confused, she raised her head only to find that she was still in the Gaunt family cemetery.

She looked around, expecting to see Voldemort or Nagini but found herself alone beneath a gossamer sky and a lukewarm September sun.

She let out an ashamed moan, thinking she had passed out on the ground from drinking when a slip of paper sticking out from underneath a small purple velvet string bag caught her eye. She picked up the paper. It read,

_Mom, have fun tonight. Buy yourself a new dress._

She pressed the note into her chest, touched.


	18. The Book

A few days passed. Within that time, Ariel's affections for Snape doubled. Their first date together was populated entirely by animated conversations on a variety of subjects (with the one glaring exception being their relations with Tom/ Voldemort). In their discussions, they found they were held identical positions on numerous subjects including but not limited to: potions, politics, culture, mythical beings rights, marriage, and parenting (to other's relief neither of them wanted children preferring rather being childless adults who did as they pleased for as long as they pleased). Severus managed to tell her his life story in 5 minutes and happily spent the majority of the evening listening to Ariel tell stories of herself, of her former life in the sea, of old adventures and of course, of her family.

"Six sisters?"

"Uh-huh. My poor dad had to wear a bra just to fit in."

"It must have been constant chaos."

"I loved it. I was the baby so I always had someone to play with or someone to annoy."

"I imagine you ran...wild."

Ariel smiled. The way he said it made her insides ache. She reached for his hand and started rubbing his thumb, never losing eye contact as she said, "Oh yeah."

* * *

By the time midnight came, so did Ariel. Six times. She also came to the sleepy realization, half a second before she passed out from sheer exhaustion, was that her infatuation for him had doubled—if not quadrupled—in that one night. And she knew it wouldn't be long before she would be truly deeply madly in love with this man.

* * *

It took two weeks but she proved herself right. One morning during another thrilling round of sex she blurted out, mid-climax, "I love you." Snape ceased thrusting long enough to stop and ask, "What did you say?" But Ariel lied and said it was a heat of the moment act, nothing more. They continued fucking but Snape, who felt what Ariel was too cowardly to admit, exerted every last ounce of passion he could into their sex so that when they both came undone, he could plunge forward into an open mouth kiss look her in the eye and say, "I love you too."

Ariel's heart seized and burned for him so profoundly after that if he had asked her to ruin her life for him, she would've without hesitation.

* * *

By six weeks, they were practically living together, effectively splitting their free time together between Hogwarts and Spinner's End. Ariel moved into his childhood home since there was no sense in hunting for a new home when his sat unlived in for 9 months out of the year and spent her days thoroughly enjoying full use of his laboratory while he worked after which they would rejoin in the evenings and enjoy each other's intimacy.

When she wasn't enjoying the intimacies of a new, fulfilling relationship, she did as she pleased. Which often meant potion-making, or exploring, or, as was the case for her on that fine crisp November morning, visiting her sisters.

She hadn't been in that old house for more than a few minutes, having Floo Powdered from the warmth of the Hogwarts bed to brush her hair and teeth before she would dart off to meet her all six of her sisters off the coast of some nameless beach when she was jolted out of mindless contentment by the sound of an angry voice hissing, "If I don't find that fucking book I'm going to slaughter every single fucking person in this deadbeat town."

She stopped brushing her hair and cried, "Tom?"

Pause. "Mom?"

She rushed out the bathroom, hairbrush still in hand, and peered down the hallway banister which gave a full view of the living room. Voldemort was crouched before one of the wall length bookcases but his face was drained of the rage she heard earlier replaced by the glee of a small child who had spotted their parent after a short but agonizing separation.

"Mom."

"Tom...What are you doing here?" She asked, trying to sound casual as she descended the stairs.

"I'm just looking for a book I lent Severus a while back." He said with a light almost nervous laugh as he slowly stood to greet her. "Going to catch up on some light reading finally."

She knew, the way most people who spoke with Voldemort knew, he was probably lying but she ignored it in order to appraise him. It had been nearly two months since they last saw each other and he looked terrible even for him. The white in his eyes was streaked with red and he bore the haggard, shallow-faced expression of a man who hadn't seen sunlight in many weeks. Purple and green veins glistened against his bald head like fresh claw marks.

"Oh, Tom…You look like you haven't slept in weeks."

"That depends. What day is it?"

"The first."

"Of October?"

"November."

His eyes rounded with mild surprise. "Oh wow. It's been six weeks." He let out a small, delirious chuckle of a man who had discovered he had unintentionally done something naughty. "That's a new record for me." But when he caught her worried eye, he exhaled pensively and said, "You look like you're on your way to the beach."

She looked down at herself, having forgotten she had tugged on her swimsuit mere minutes beforehand. "I am. I'm going to go to visit my sisters."

"Aw, a sister day. Sounds delightful," he said with a grin, his head turned slightly towards the bookshelf. He had finally spotted the book he needed out of the corner of his eye. A slender black spellbook for which held the curse he needed. He grabbed the book with one hand and turned to leave, telling Ariel, "Well I won't keep you. I hope you enjoy your day. We should do lunch soon."

Ariel tried to catch a glimpse at the cover of the book he took but only saw symbols she didn't understand written, in what looked like, crystallized blood. She didn't have to know what the book was called to know the book possessed an energy that sent a clammy fear down her spine. It was clear that this book held the power to create, and teach great evil and that if she let him walk away with that book it would cause great harm.

"You know, you're welcome to come and meet your aunts if you want," Ariel said to the back of his head.

He stopped so abruptly he felt his heart slam into his ribcage. Aunts. The very word tickled his ears. Less than two months ago, every last one of his family members was dead. Now, not only did he have a mom—a beautiful, sweet, loving, lovely, funny, fun, brilliant mom too—but now…he had aunts. Six aunts.

But then his mind reminded him of his work. Since his duel with Albus, he had become obsessed with getting everything ready for war. In his last six weeks, he had spent every last hour of his time in a sunless cave trying to figuring out a way to spare the inferi from decomposition. And here he finally found the book that held the curse that would solve his decaying army problem. "Oh, I wouldn't want to intrude…"

"You can't intrude if you're being invited." She replied, taking a half step towards him, wearing the sweetest smile. "Besides, I'm sure my sisters would love to meet their nephew."

At the sound of "nephew", Voldemort made a noise he wasn't proud of: something of a deranged little squawk of utter jubilation. Then with breathless energy, he said, "I would love to." He quickly stuffed the black book into the pocket of his robes then dug into his other pocket and drew out a vial which he promptly uncorked and ingested the contents in a single gulp.

His face contorted instantly. Color grew within his cheeks, hair produced at remarkable speed and, to her heart-stopping surprise, a face she once knew returned. In less than a minute's time, a twenty-something Tom Riddle stood in Voldemort's robes wearing the widest smile.

"I kept some hair for when I need to look…well…human." He explained, taking delight in her involuntary stares. "Better?"

Ariel didn't say anything right away. Instead, she continued to scan over his lovely face with widened eyes for a heartbeat. Then she took a step forward and slowly lifted her hand to his hairline. He didn't move his head when she ran her fingers through his dark-brown waves.

For a moment, they stood there, studying each another's face with loving eyes.

"Wow," Ariel breathed. "How old were you here?"

"Twenty-five I think." It was in-between the making of his first and second Horcrux. Back when he was still discovering the lows he would sink in order to be immortal.

"Twenty-five," she sighed, letting her hand drop to her side. "I don't even remember my twenties."

Tom gave her a closed-lipped smile. "Probably from all that drinking."

Ariel pinched him in the upper arm. "You're such an asshole." Tom feigned as if she had stabbed him and she pinched him again harder to which he let out an actual yelp of pain. But then they dissolved into fits of laughter and for a moment it felt like old times.

Eventually, Ariel remembered her plans and she prepared their leave by placing seashells in a circle on the ground, which Tom watched with a vague smile on his handsome face. He was filled with a joy he never knew or never expected to know. Everything was coming together for him: Albus was dying, no doubt the old man would be dead before the end of next year; he had more followers now than he did forty years ago; and soon, when he obtained the Elder Wand, his powers will be stronger than they ever were, even before his quasi-death; and now, on top of all that, he was apart of a family.

When Ariel gestured for him to step into the circle, he jogged to join her and laced his fingers around hers, planting a quick chaste kiss on her cheekbone as they disappeared from Spinner's End.


	19. The Seven Sirens of the Great Seas

Chapter Eighteen: Seven Sirens of the Great Seas

One moment, they were sinking into the cool floorboards. The next thing he knew, he was scrunching his white toes in a batch of warm, bluish sand and they were outdoors underneath a balmy sun. Tom craned his pale neck towards a twinkling, clear, sunny sky and smiled with his eyes closed. The sunlight felt magnificent against his skin and what little modesty he possessed fell away from him as he slid off his black robes. He stood there, allowing a perfect breeze and a glorious sun to caress his bare body and he took a giant breath so he could drink in the pure ocean air. He opened his eyes with lazy happiness and turned his head to the horizon where aquamarine waves undulated as if to greet him and him alone.

He was pulled out of his reverie by the distinct sound of feminine chatter and his squalid heart jolted alive.

Ariel bent down to collect her seashells and carefully placed them back in her messenger bag. When she stood back up, she was stalled by what she saw. While his nakedness didn't startle her in the slightest, what she saw on his back made her stomach knot with alarm: A symbol she knew to be the Deathly Hallows took up the entire canvas that was his back. At first, she thought, this is simply a tattoo, done by some heavy-handed scratcher of an artist, but the longer she traced over his back with her eyes did what she saw made her blood run cold. The symbol looked as if it had been carved into his back. The lines were thick, raised and mangled-looking like an old scar of a brutal attack.

He turned his head and saw her stares. "What?" He glanced backward then laughed as he had just remembered something. "Thanks for reminding me." He said as he bent down to retrieve a small sack from his robes. He stuck his entire arm into the ridiculously small cloth bag and rummaged around until he finally pulled out a few articles of muggle clothes which he quickly threw on. As he dressed, he spotted Ariel's stares and told her, "Ma, it's just a tattoo. I got it 30 years ago."

"It looked like a scar."

"Tattoos are, technically, scars."

She gave him an unconvinced stare.

He didn't look at her though. He was squinting and smiling ahead at the purple lagoon where six languishing mermaids gossiped, arguing, antagonized, and talked over another with their angelic voices. He felt drunk with joy. To him, this was the pinnacle of his career in seeking immortality: Conversing and enjoying the company of real immortal beings. It was nearly giddy, thinking soon I will be one. But for now, he got to be in the company of goddesses and that was more than enough.

They meandered to the shoreline where Adella spotted them first and all their collective attention span was zeroed in on Ariel and this new younger stranger.

"Look what the catfish dragged in," observed Adella with her honeysuckle lilt as they swam to the edge of the waters to greet the pair. "Where's Severus, baby sister? Don't tell me you've already traded in one human for another."

"No, unfortunately for all of you, we are still together."

"Ha, pay up," Adella said to Attina who grudgingly handed over a silver dollar.

"They've already met Severus?" Tom asked teasingly. "I didn't realize you two were getting so serious."

"Of course, they have met Severus and they already like him better than they like me," said Ariel as she waded through the purple lagoon to receive a hug from each of her sisters.

"Vicious lies," said Adella as she swam over to embrace her sister.

"We only asked because we made a list of words we wanted him to say," insisted Adriana with her cheerful lisp pointing to an area of sand where words were had been written with a finger.

"Fawning, salacious, exquisite," listed Attina with a poised, euphonic reading voice.

"Rutabaga," chimed in Arista her voice reminding Tom instantly of a red summer dawn.

"Rutabaga isn't a sexy word," argued Aquatta whose voice had a welcoming, soothing, but cool tone. Like Aloe lotion on a sunburn.

"I just want to see if he could make it sound sexy," said Arista as she made her way to embrace Ariel. She glanced over her shoulder, her bright orchid eyes blinking curiously at the young man who hung back at the edge of the lagoon. When she let go, she asked her sister, "Aren't you going to introduce us to your shy friend?"

Tom stopped studying his reflection in the glass-like waters in order to lift his head and watch Ariel as she addressed her sisters. She pivoted herself so that she could switch her gaze between her sisters and him as she announced, "Sissies…I would like you to meet someone. His name's Tom and…he's…my son. I, uh, fostered him when he was a kid and when I came to land, we reunited and—decided to make it official."

It was the first time she had ever called him her son aloud.

Tom beamed at her, eyes stinging, lips shaking from smiling too hard. She held out her hand for him and he propelled himself into the waters to reach for it.

There were a few, audible gasps.

"You…you adopted a witch?" Arista gasped her voice pitchy as it started to crack as tears appeared in her big, violet eyes.

"Uh-huh," said Ariel, in-between sniffles.

"You're a mom?" cried out Alana and Aquatta.

"I'm an auntie?" Attina cried, her voice two octaves higher than normal, her hands crossed over her breast as if to save her heart from exploding.

Pandemonium ensued as the six sisters dissipated into an excited frenzy. Adella, Adriana, and Arista pushed Ariel aside so they could group tackle hug Tom off his feet and proceed to lavish the young man with soft pinches, sloppy kisses, intrusive questions, and adoring praise.

"Look at him!" remarked Adella. "He even has her eyes!"

"No, he has ice blue eyes like his aunt," Adriana argued, gesturing from his eyes to her big blue eyes with pride. "Ariel's eyes are more of an ocean blue."

Arista smushed his cheeks between her hands and cried, "Such a handsome boy!" She released him and slung her shoulder around his as she whispered, "I bet you fend off admirers with a sword."

"A sword no but a wand yes," replied Tom with a jackal's laugh.

"You seem like you'd be a terrible flirt," Arista said.

"Well if I am, I probably got it from my Aunt Arista."

Arista let out a false gasp of offense while a shadow of a flattered grin tugging at the corners of her lovely lips. "What lies has my sister told you of me?"

"None! I only know what I've read of you."

His words caught the attention of Alana, Attinna, and Aquatta who had railed around Ariel, demanding to know the why's and how's and when's of this adoption tale.

"You've read of us?" asked Attina.

"I've gobbled up every book I could find about you seven," said Tom, his eyes flashed over all of them. He could have basked in their beauty for days. How they were all equally the most beautiful creature he had ever laid eyes on rendered him momentarily speechless.

"Whatever you've read, it's all lies!" Adella interjected causing all of them to laugh.

"I sincerely hope not," said Tom with a shark-like grin. To Arista, he said, "Some of my favorite stories growing up were about the Blonde Bane of Belize."

"Aw, Belize! Good times..."

"Or about Queen Attina of the Great Deep. Wise and beautiful ruler of the largest underwater kingdom in the world. Or of Adriana, whose eyes were so captivating it inspired the poet Agnes Ainsworth to write seventeen hundred sonnets about them and them alone? Or of Alana, who once burped so hard it caused a Tsunami that wiped out half of Ireland."

Alana grinned proudly at her sisters. "I always knew muggle writers were fascinated by us."

"But we never thought we were subject to such extensive research," said Adriana with a coy smile that belied otherwise.

"What a sweetheart," Adella whispered to Ariel.

"He's very sweet," said Ariel in a voice slightly louder than normal. "When he wants to be."

"When am I ever anything less than polite and well-behaved around you?" said Tom with a mawkish smile.

Ariel gave him a tucked-in lopsided grin. "That's very true. You were always good to me."

"That's because you were always good to me." Then, he said, his voice soaked with a tenderness he wished he showed more often, "And I'm forever grateful that you came into my life."

This garnered a collective "aww".

"If you two keep making us cry, this lagoon is going to turn into an ocean," said Aquatta wryly as she used a knuckle to dry a tear.

"I can't help it," he said his eyes pinned on Ariel. He turned his head to his aunts and told them, "I'm still in awe that a creature like her took an interest in me. I mean, she would go out of her way, once a year, to spend the day with me. Me. This no-nothing child that she didn't owe a single thing to. I used to look forward to that day more than Christmas and my birthday and every holiday combine. And there was never a day that we spent together that wasn't filled with joy and laughter and wisdom and love…No, no, it's true. You were a perfect older figure to me. Your sister was the first person in my life to make me feel loved and valued and cared for…And…And…" He turned to Ariel, his eyes shining with stuck tears, face soft with the need to know. "Mom, I have to know. Why? Why, out of all the children in the world, why did you choose me? Why me?"

Ariel hesitated. "Do you really want to know?"

He took her by the hand and breathed, "Yes."

She looked down at his hand sitting on top of hers then lifted her head and said, "I remember looking at you and just knowing right away that you were full of this…rage. I figured, maybe, if I became your friend…you wouldn't grow up to be a serial murderer."

He stalled as if trying to decipher whether or not she was telling the truth. Then, his eyes scrunched tight and his lips parted wide as he bent over into uncontrollable laughter. His laughter was contagious to everyone but Ariel who cut a worried side glance at Tom who cackled away, as if it were truly the funniest thing he had ever heard. Eventually, he stopped laughing hard enough to wrap his arms around her neck and profess with total endearment, "I love you so much, mom."

"Aww…"

"I love you too, son."

"Awwwwww…"

* * *

From there, the conversation changed. Tom floated quietly while he lost himself in their various conversations, giving half-truths to questions when they were thrown his way, smiling often, occasionally darting out of the lagoon to sip from his collection of Polyjuice brew.

"You're not going to share?" teased Aquatta when he made another trip for a drink.

"You're welcome to have some, but sadly they haven't invented an allergy potion yet that gets you drunk," Tom lied after another gulp.

"There's an idea for you, Ariel," said Attina.

Ariel smiled but said nothing. Her silence tempted Tom to search through her thoughts, to see what troubled her, but then Adella addressed him. "So, Tom, tell us about yourself."

"Oh, I'm not that interesting. I mostly spend my free time reading and practicing magic."

"No love interests?" asked Arista slyly.

"I've always preferred the single life."

"Aww, so no grandchildren for Ariel I see."

"I'm afraid not."

"Probably for the best," remarked Arista. "I mean, what with the state your world is right now."

"What with that deranged bastard running around," said Aquatta furiously.

"Lord Fuckface," said Adriana.

"Lord Avortement," added Attina.

"Très intelligent," chuckled Tom.

"Ah, tu parles français?"

"Un peu."

"He-who-needs-to-get-stabbed-in-the-face," giggled Alana.

"Wait wait wait I got one. The Twat Lord," interjected Tom. "No, wait that sucked. Attina's was better."

"Attina did have the best one," agreed Aquatta. "But it's a relief to hear you're not another one of that monster's followers."

"Oh, trust me. I am no follower," said Tom.

"Smart boy," said Arista giving his cheek an affectionate squeeze.

"You know, I didn't think celestial creatures like yourself concerned yourself with the lives of witches."

"We normally don't," replied Aquatta.

"But the stories we've heard," said Adriana her sentence trailing off with an involuntary shudder.

"It's a damn shame he didn't stay dead," stated Alana.

Despite what they were saying about him, Tom couldn't be more thrilled. This was the highlight of his career as a Dark Lord. Not only were these Goddesses of the Great Seas aware of his existence but they spoke of him in their free time and held strong enough opinions about him to ridicule him! He never felt more seen in his entire life. He looked at Ariel, hoping to see motherly pride in her eyes but her face was cloudy and distrustful. He could hear her thoughts, one false move and I'll claw your face off. Her thoughts pained him greatly. How could she think…but then again how could she not? Without losing her gaze, he dug into swim shorts pocket and heaved his wand into the sand where it remained, untouched, for the remainder of his time with them.


	20. Unbreakable Vows

All perfect days come to an end. Tom's ended when he saw his reflection at the bottom of his Polyjuice brew vial.

"I'm afraid I must leave," he announced with audible regret when he returned to the moonlight lagoon.

"So soon?" Adriana asked sadly.

"I have to go home and feed my snake before I lose another loveseat."

(This wasn't a lie either. One time he didn't feed Nagini for 15 hours and he came home to a half-eaten couch.)

"I'm going to go too," said Ariel as she wrapped an arm around Attina who happened to be nearest.

It took them a half hour to say goodbye. Every hug lingered. Every tiny space on his face had been kissed or pinched and touched. And when they weren't taking turns dousing him with affections, they were stretching out last minutes conversations with Ariel.

He was still sending goodbyes when he and Ariel made their leave for the shoreline, waving and shouting as he walked backward, drunk on love, "Goodbye Auntie Adella. Farewell Auntie Adriana. Arrivederci, Auntie Arista. Adieu, Auntie Alana. Adios Auntie Aquatta. Au revoir Auntie Attina!"

"We love you! Be safe! Take care!" They chorused before each of their tails slapped the waters. One by one, they disappeared.

"Be safe." He echoed with a snort. Ariel had stepped into the circle when he grabbed her by the arm, raised it triumphantly, and decried to the near-empty beach, "As if anything in this realm could stand a chance against us!"

He was still holding her arm when their bodies dissolved into grains of sand and transported them back to Spinner's End.

* * *

"I was almost worried if we stayed any longer, the effects would've worn off right in front of them," said Tom as he pulled off his muggle clothes and got back into his robes. "Could you imagine?"

Ariel let out a weak chuckle. She looked around while he changed.

"Thank you. For everything."

She turned her head. Young Tom was back in Voldemort's old robes. His face blurred back into Voldemort's then in a flash returned to handsome visage that currently regarded her like she was the most important creature in the universe.

"You don't have to keep thanking me."

Handsome Tom gave her an odd smile then he took a step towards her and wrapped his arms around her. "Yes, I do."

He hugged her for what felt like an entire hour in silence. She planted her ear against his chest while he rested his chin on her crown. For a while, they stood there, in the middle of that old house, listening to each other's pulses, breathing in each other's scent. To her, he smelled like sand and seaweed. To him, she smelled like coconut oil and the Earth before a thunderstorm.

They continued hugging even as the Polyjuice Potion began to wear off. When they eventually broke apart, and Ariel discovered Voldemort's nightmarish face smiling down on her, she beheld it with the same loving scrutiny as if it were Tom's.

"I had fun," Voldemort said with a small surprised laugh as if shocked he could still feel such trivial emotions.

"Me too."

"We should make this a weekly thing." He said, trying and failing to sound off-hand as he suggested, "Maybe make Mondays into Mother-Son days."

Ariel cut the murderous wizard a sideways glance. How was this wizard before her, this hideous noseless creature who was practically begging her to love him, be the cruel, soulless Lord Voldemort? How could this be the same wizard she had spent so many years appalled by tales of his never-ending evil? "Well, I don't know…If we do make this a weekly thing, are you going to be on your best behavior?" Her voice turned serious when she added, "Or am I going to see things I wish I hadn't?"

"That depends. What's your definition of 'best behavior'?"

She gave him a pointed look. "No murders. Or tortures."

"Is that it?"

"AND no intimidation, no kidnappings or slaughtering creatures for fun."

"Ugh, all these rules. I feel like I'm back in school." Ariel opened her mouth to scold him when Voldemort cut her off, "I was only teasing, mother. You know I'd do anything for you."

She smiled, deciding to believe him. "Mother?" She repeated with a mock-offense.

"Mama felt weird." He explained with a snake-like grin. "Or do you prefer, mom? Ooh or madre? Wait—what am I saying, we're not Italian."

"You can call me whatever you want. Just know, I will never call you Lord Voldemort."

"And I would never make you," Voldemort said with a loving smile. Then with a quick kiss on the cheek, he announced, "I really should go. I love you, mom. Tell Severus I'll see him soon."

"I love you too, Tommy."

* * *

Snape remembered being in a bar. It was late and he had a vague feeling telling him that he should be going somewhere, looking for someone. Then a male silvery voice came from the side and said, "Hey handsome. Can I buy you a drink?"

He turned his head and there stood Tom Riddle, virile as the day he first met him, leaning into the bar with a handsome devil's smile. Their conversation culminated when Tom asked, in a voice so sweet, "Have you ever had your asshole licked by a parseltongue?" Seconds later they were in his old bed at Spinner's End discovering each other's g-spots. Then the door flung open. Ariel walked in wearing a wretched smile. She was covered in blood and she was making this horrendous sound, this savage laugh so cruel it paralyzed him with fear. "It's all your fault, Severus," Ariel cried in a tinny sing-song voice. Snape had no idea what she meant until he saw Ariel pull Draco's severed head from behind her back. He watched in horror as she swung the bloodied head by a fist-full of blonde locks around like a pendulum. The last thing he remembered was a naked Voldemort laying in Tom Riddle's place giving him a sly wink before he whispered in his ear, "Don't forget. You were mine first."

He jolted awake drenched in enough sweat to fill a sink thinking with a scream in his ears that he assumed was his own but to his relief Ariel slept-hummed away. By the time his heart rate settled, he successfully pushed away Draco's decapitated head from his mind and fought the rest of the night for a few more dreamless hours of sleep before work.

* * *

Draco knew there was a slim chance of him seeing the New Year.

All his attempts to kill Dumbledore without having to look the old wizard in the face were one spectacular failure after another. Worse, everyone knew it was him. He felt everyone's eyes. They knew. Potter knew. So did his friends. His teachers. Dumbledore. The Dark Lord. They all watched him try and fail and it was absurd how well everyone knew yet no one came for him. No teacher, no judge or executioner. The only one who talked to him about it was Uncle Sev but he merely screamed at him for not letting him to the task himself.

"Just let me—"

"I can do this!"

"Be that so! Why turn down someone's offer to do an unpleasant task when you can spare yourself?"

"Spare me from what?! He's aching for a reason to cut my head off. If I don't do this—"

"All he cares about is if the task is complete. Whoever—"

"This is my task! He assigned it to me. Which means if I fail…"

"You don't have to fail. Let me do this for you!"  
"How is constantly solving my problems for me supposed to be good for me?" (Snape balked) "I don't know how many times I need to tell you this but: No one asked for your help."

That was their last conversation before the disaster fight at Slughorn's party and summitted with Draco, once again, storming out of his office. From there, they didn't say anything beyond perfunctory small talk from then to the end of the fall term.

Classes became pure agony for all he did was wait for his jailers, listen for his classmates' and teachers' scorn, struggle through exhaustion migraines and flashbacks of nightmares and the voices in his head that sounded a lot like Voldemort that told him "I'm going to kill you I'm going to kill you I'm going to kill you."

* * *

The Malfoys were foolishly hopeful.

The Dark Lord was in a fantastic mood lately. His capricious temperament of before had tempered slightly since Ariel's arrival. While his bloodlust didn't disappear entirely, that would be deranged, he was slower to punish his followers and his cruelty was redirected to where it belonged: muggles, sub-creatures and blood traitors. And the Malfoys were grateful to be in his somewhat good graces again.

Then Draco, prodigal son, had returned and for a few days the dour Malfoy Manor was teeming with holiday cheer and the Malfoys tricked themselves into thinking Draco would be spared the Dark Lord's wrath.

They were wrong, of course.

It was the morning of New Year's Eve and Narcissa was the first one to rise. She was so high from well rest she actually woke up that morning humming. Her moods, and her sleep schedule, always improved once Draco returned from school but since both her son and her husband were home (and more importantly, the Dark Lord had moved out permanently) she hadn't been depressed (or woken up hungover as hell) in weeks.

She was still humming, loudly, when she walked down to her kitchen and a horribly familiar voice greeted her from behind, "Good morning, Narcissa."

She whirled around to discover the Dark Lord sitting at her kitchen table, venomous Nagini draped across his shoulders, book in hand, with a smile on his face that made her insides melt with terror.

"My Lord." Narcissa blurted out breathlessly. Then she remembered her place and took a nervous bow before picking herself up and asking, with some calm, "What do I owe the pleasure?"

Voldemort turned the book so that the book was split open to his last page. She caught a full view of the cover and recognized the ancient runes at once. Necromancy. Magic so dark it sent a shiver to her core just looking at the book. "I wanted to speak to your son."

His voice was warm but he had that look in his face. Like he was desperate for depravity.

"Would you mind…?"

Narcissa felt her heart plummet to her feet. She saw it in his eyes. He wanted to butcher her baby. This would be her punishment for using Ariel to break Lucius out of jail. He waited until after Saturnalia until they were lulled into a false sense of security, to do this. So that every year, for the rest of her miserable life, she would start the new year with the memory of her son's slaughtering fresh in her mind. She knew it. He knew she knew it and that's why his smile widened under her crestfallen stares.

* * *

The walk from Draco's bedroom to the kitchen felt like an endless death march. It was all she could do not to sob the entire way, least her cries encourage the Dark Lord's callousness. Draco made no pretenses to hide his fears either which is when Narcissa took to the Dark Lord he squeezed her hand the entire way.

"Ah, little Draco, back from school," Voldemort remarked once the pair came before him. "How was your fall term?"

"Um…actually—"

"Just kidding. I actually don't give a shit." Voldemort laughed as he began to twirl his gnarly wand in-between his fingers. "I heard about the cursed necklace though. What a spectacular failure that turned out to be, right?" He laughed again while Draco and Narcissa withered in silence. "Oh, it's a hard lesson to learn, Draco, I'm sure. I know it's hard for a lot of people their first time. I mean, not for me, of course. By the time I was your age I already successfully gotten away with five murders but I understand everyone's different." With that, he stood up and walked from around the kitchen table. Draco and Narcissa's spines straightened instinctively as he ventured towards them with a terrible smile curled along his lipless mouth. "Which is why I thought of the perfect punishment. It's harsh but fair and I think it'll drive home a very important lesson that I think all Death Eaters should learn." He reached forward and grabbed Draco by the jawbone. He was so close Draco could smell the fresh blood on Nagini's breath. "You can't be afraid to get your hands dirty."

He punctuated his statement by letting go of Draco's chin, leaving behind two red indents from where his thumb and index finger dug into him. He then raised his wand-carrying hand to above his shoulder and flicked it forward.

To Draco and Narcissa's bewilderment, out from an unseen corner hopped along with a collection of, what they would find out later to be, muggle cleaning supplies: a mop, bucket, a rectangular sponge, a dustpan, some rags, a spray bottle fill of white vinegar and water, and a plain old broom. To Draco's confusion, the cleaning supplies hopped right into his arms.

"What the…?"

"These are what muggles use to clean with," Voldemort informed gleefully. "And you, little Draco, are going to use them to clean your godfather's house. From top to bottom."

Narcissa nearly burst out crying right then and there. Draco was half inclined to beg the Dark Lord to just kill him now. But before either could respond the Dark Lord had clamped a hand onto Draco's shoulder. A split second later Narcissa was alone in her luxuriate kitchen.

* * *

A split second later and Draco was in Snape's kitchen, staring out of the threshold that led into the living room. He could see the back of Ariel's head from where he stood and he opened his mouth to greet her when he felt a cold hand slide over his lips.

Voldemort shushed him then used his wand to send Nagini through the air like a venomous blimp. Draco's heart raced when he saw the mischievous glint in the Dark Lord's eyes. He should have known. He wasn't there to clean up a dusty house. He was there to help because the Dark Lord wanted little Draco would dispose of Ariel's corpse and to know: no one was spared from his wrath. Not even his own mother.

Ariel was alone, in the living room, with the newest issue of Potions Heads Monthly when a soft sibilant sound pulled her nose out of the magazine. She looked up and found Nagini floating above her head, staring at her with unblinking black eyes, her little black tongue poking at her, hissing away as if saying, you smell good enough to taste. But Ariel didn't flinch or scream or was startled in any way to see that man-eating cobra instead she gave the fearsome beast a small smile then reached up and gave its chin an affectionate scratch.

"Well, hello to you." Ariel cooed.

The giant cobra dropped from the ceiling and fell into Ariel's lap but she continued to lavish the beast with pets like Nagini was merely a friendly dog.

"Wow, Nagini!" Ariel remarked affectionately. "You're getting so big! Yes, you are!"

A beleaguered sigh from behind announced Voldemort's presence. "I should have known by now nothing scares you."

She looked over her shoulder. Out from the kitchen strolled Voldemort and timid-as-ever-looking Draco. "You were trying to scare me?"

"Tried to," he replied as he leaned down to deliver a hello kiss on her cheek. "Hello, mom."

"Hello, Tom."

Tom? Draco thought. He didn't even know the Dark Lord had a first name.

Voldemort stood back up and looked at Draco, who was doing his best to not look like he wasn't scared shitless. He cleared his throat threateningly.

"G-good morning Lady Ariel," Draco said.

"Oh, sweetheart, you don't have to call me that. Ariel is just fine." His chest tightened under Voldemort's smoldering stare, which told him, try and I'll throw you out the first window I see.

"It's a habit," he said. "I was taught it's rude to call adults by their first name. And since you don't have a surname, I thought Lady Ariel was the only proper way to address you."

His quick lie made the Dark Lord smile. "Such a well-mannered young man." To Ariel, he said, "You know it's funny, I was talking to Draco, here, about how, as a late Saturnalia gift, I was going to send a bunch of elves to clean this house—because I couldn't help but notice how filthy this place has gotten over the years—and Draco, here, not only offers up his services but he insists on doing it without magic!"

"Is that right?" Ariel asked, unconvinced.

"It's true." Draco piped up. "I love cleaning without magic. I find it peaceful."

It was the biggest bald-faced lie he'd ever made in his short life. But Draco would have said anything to keep the Dark Lord's wand from turning onto him or, worse, his parents.

"I will never understand how anybody can find cleaning without magic peaceful," said Voldemort to Ariel. "But he insisted."

Ariel studied Draco's face for a moment as if waiting for his façade to crack. But when it didn't, she asked him, "Would you like some tea before you start?"

"No thank you, Lady Ariel," Draco said as he headed for the stairs, eager to get as far away from the Dark Lord and his oblivious mother as he could.

"Draco," The Dark Lord's tepid voice called for him when he was halfway up the stairs. Draco looked past the mop and broom his struggled to carry and saw Voldemort's cruel smile. "You forgot your sponge."

Ariel let out a panicked yelp then bolted out of her chair, pushing Nagini onto the floor as she darted for the sponge that fell to the floor then hightailed it for the kitchen. "Sponges can't be out of the water that long!"

"Mom, no! It's not a sea sponge!" Voldemort cried over the sound of running water.

* * *

Once the panic settled down and Draco was on the other side of the house, crying over how shitty it is to clean without magic ("how do muggles do this every day?!"), did Ariel turn to Voldemort and say, "Happy birthday."

Voldemort gave her an endeared smile. He must have told her once, in passing, decades ago, yet she still remembered.

"I got you something."

"Ooh! What is it?" He asked as he watched her climb from her chair and pull a badly wrapped package from underneath the couch.

"Oh, like you can't read minds." She said, handing him the light rectangular-shaped object.

"Legilimency isn't as simple as reading minds. It's—"

"Just open your gift."

Voldemort tore through the wrapping to find she had given him a copy of _The Tales of the Beedle the Bard._ Mom, I'm seventy-one-fucking-years-old and you give me a children's book? He thought but he feigned enthusiasm for her sake. "Aww, a book. You know me so well."

"You like it?"

"I love it."

"Good because there's more."

"Two presents? I barely deserve one."

Ariel reached over and took the book from him. Then she got up, took him by the hand, and lead him to the couch. He took one end and she took the other. With the book propped up on her bended knees, she explained, "I figured we could read some of the stories together." She glanced over the top of the book and caught his stunned stare. "I mean if you're not too old to be read to."

If only his childhood-self was there now. He'd be sick with envy. "I genuinely would love that."

Ariel smiled at him then read the tale of "the Wizard and the Hopping Pot" which he listened to in captivated silence.

* * *

By the time Draco had finished cleaning the second floor of Spinner's End, his body felt like it was run over by a stampede of unicorns. But even as he hobbled down the flight of steps with his collection of cleaning supplies, Draco kept his aches and pains to himself. Not out of fear of being heard by the Dark Lord, but because he didn't want to miss a word of his conversations with Ariel.

"So, where's lover boy?" He heard the Dark Lord ask, referring to Snape.

"He's with his mother."

"She's still alive?"

"I know, lucky bastard."

Draco quietly set his mop and bucket down on the first floor and walked back up the flight of steps with a broom in hand so he could sweep from the top down. He walked on his tiptoes so his footfalls wouldn't cause the old steps to creak too loudly as the pair continued on. But the Dark Lord must have sensed he was eavesdropping because after that their conversation devolved into snickers and whispers. His ears pricked, trying desperately to catch a phrase or two, but after a while, he gave up and focused on his cleaning.

He was wrapped up in his own thoughts when a voice startled him out of his reverie. "Draco?"

"Ah!" He cried, though the second it left his mouth he regretted it. It was merely Ariel, standing at the bottom of the steps.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to startle you. I was wondering if you're hungry."

He didn't even realize his own hunger until she mentioned it. The mere suggestion caused his stomach to churn loudly.

"I'll take that as a yes." She said with amusement. "C'mon. Take a break. I was just about to make lunch."

She turned away but Draco hesitated to follow her. He searched for the Dark Lord's eyes, to make sure it was okay first, but the only one in the living room when he looked was Nagini, coiled up and snoozing on an armchair. His stomach gurgled, louder, begging him to eat but his gut warned him against the idea. You can't eat now! You must flee! Danger is near!

But he was so hungry and weary at that moment it didn't even matter to him that this was possibly his last meal. At least, he thought as he ventured towards the kitchen, I'll get a last meal. Most people don't get that privilege when it came to the Dark Lord.

  
  



	21. The Half-Blood Prince's Birthday Lunch

Ariel was singing to herself with her back to the opening when Draco emerged into the modest kitchen. The sound of her melodic voice mixed with the loud cacophony of her loudly chopping onions.

" _Sha-la-la-la-la-la_

_Don't be scared_

_You better be prepared_

_Go on and—"_ (chop chop chop)

_Sha-la-la-la-la-la_

_Don't stop now_

_Don't try to hide it_

_How you wanna"_ (chop chop chop chop chop)

Each time the sound of a knife connected with a cutting board jutted Draco's racing heart. He looked around for the Dark Lord but it was only them.

"Are you allergic to anything?" Ariel's melodic voice pierced his head fog.

He had to think. He barely knew himself anymore. If someone had asked him last year he's dietary preferences he would've given them a whole litany of foods his refined taste buds couldn't bear. Wasn't he the same child that demanded a personal chef for his 8th birthday because Narcissa's family elf's cooking wasn't up to standard? But now, he felt as feral as an abused dog, happy with whatever he could get his mouth on so long as it wasn't a foot or a fist.

"N-no, madam."

"Good. I'm making trout." She turned her head to the pile of onions then looked at him again and said, "Sweetheart you don't have to stand there. Take a seat if you want."

Draco took the chair closest to him and he was so sore and tired he practically collapsed into the stiff wooden chair like it was a mound of pillows. He let his head hang, grateful for the momentary rest until a thud made him jerk upward.

Ariel had set a glass of water in front of him. When he caught her eye, she looked away as if embarrassed.

"Thank you."

"No problem, sweetheart." She replied as she went back to the onions.

Every time she called him sweetheart it felt like a comforting breeze against exposed sweaty skin. He felt himself ease a little bit with water sloshing in his belly.

_"Sha-la-la-la-la-la_

_My, oh my_

_Looks like the boy's too shy_

_Ain't gonna—"_

"What are you singing?" He asked finally.

"It's a song a family friend made up a long time ago. I don't know the name."

"It's catchy."

Ariel smirked into her pile of onions. "He wrote it to help me win a bet against a sea witch."

"What was the bet?"

"To see if I could get my land-dwelling crush to kiss me in three days without using my voice."

He smiled. He remembered a time when he asked himself was there a way for him to get Potter to love him without having to talk (or be nice) to him and felt a kinship for the young lovestruck Ariel. "Did you win?"

Ariel turned her head over her shoulder and gave him a thoughtful smile. "Yes and no. I mean, I won the bet but the prize wasn't worth all that much to begin with." She whipped her head back to the chopping board and said, "But isn't that how it always goes? You sacrifice everything for something you think you want, just to get it and realize, this isn't what I wanted at all."

Draco frowned as acrimony filled his fractured heart.

"Want to hear a funny story?"

Draco looked up to see Ariel using her knife to slide the diced onions into a simmering cauldron.

"How old are you, by the way?"

"Sixteen." Sixteen and a half was more accurate but he doubted he'd live to see seventeen.

"Aw, sixteen. You're so young... Well, anyway, when Tom was a little younger than you are now, I took him to meet my friend who wrote the song I just sang. Well, my friend Sebastian is this little crustacean." She demonstrated his diminutive size with her fingers. "Little tiny creature this big. So, I took Tom to meet him and—you know Tom—he's such an arrogant asshole to anyone he thinks is beneath him. And I forgot what he said but he said something really rude to Sebastian about his size. My friend flips out. He takes his little claws and makes a sound so loud it scares me a little." Ariel demonstrated the loudness by bashing the blade of her knife into the cutting board. "This little crab made a noise so loud it scared the literal shit out of him."

Draco let out a shocked laugh. "You're lying."

Ariel shook her head, grinning. "Swear to Cod. He literally pooped his pants."

He guffawed. He couldn't believe it. Imagining it made his core harden: little Voldemort scared shitless of a little crab. "No fucking way."

She nodded. "To this day, he gets upset whenever I bring up Sebastian around him. Or call him crabby."

Draco laughed so hard tears came out of his eyes and his nose was running. It was the first time all year he laughed that hard.

Ariel laughed with him, telling the teen once the laughter faded, "I thought you'd get a kick out of that."

Draco gave her a devious smile. "Got any more stories?"

"That's the only one I'm afraid," Ariel said. "For now. If I get any more embarrassing stories, I'll be sure to share."

"I'd like that."

They fell into a small stretch of silence before he asked, "Where did Tom—" He amended himself. "The Dark Lord go?"

"He went to go catch lunch."

Draco sat up in his chair to peer out of the kitchen window that faced the backyard. He felt like he was watching his own fever dream: here he was in Uncle Sev's house with an ex-mermaid who also happened to be the Dark Lord's adopted mother chopping onions while the Dark Lord himself stood on an ice-covered lake in the dead of winter with his wand pointed at a small hole in the ground like a hunter waiting patiently to use his spear.

* * *

He loved ice fishing. Or his version of it anyway. He loved the cold and the wait and feel of ice crystallizing against his bare feet, melting then hardening then freezing against his flesh. He couldn't wait to peel his feet from the ice, yanking off a huge chunk of his flesh along the way nor more than he could wait for an unlucky fish to swim his way.

He left the frozen lake once he caught enough fish for the three of them. His bloodied footprints trailed the frozen lake and disappeared into the back door of the old house.

* * *

He plopped his catch on the space in front of Draco and took the chair opposite of him.

"Grab me a boning knife," he ordered as he began rolling up his sleeves. He must have remembered about Ariel because he added, "Please."

Draco did as asked and watched in amazement as the Dark Lord beheaded the fish with one loud heavy-handed CHOP then methodically began to debone, gut and cube the meat.

The room was silent except for the sounds of cooking. Soon, pleasant smells filled the air, teasing the starving young man who felt dizzy waiting for the meal to be done.

Lunch came and it was terrible (Ariel used way too many onions and he forgot how much he detested trout) but Draco scarfed every bit of it down underneath the Dark Lord's watchful eye.

"Thank you, Lady Ariel."

"Don't talk with your mouth full." Voldemort snapped, his constant fury breaking through.

Ariel kicked him in the shin and for a few horrible seconds, the two of them were glaring at each other. Draco thought the house would explode from their quiet intensity but then Ariel turned her head away and told Draco with a smile, "Thank you for cleaning the house."

But Voldemort didn't turn his head. He continued giving her this hard stare like he was only now realized her defiance.

"I hate when you do that." He spoke with a coldness that Draco knew bespoke murder.

"Well I hate when you bully people," Ariel said, looking him in the eye, cool and unafraid.

Voldemort frowned hard. He looked like he was going to burst from a boiling rage. Abruptly, he snapped his head at Draco and ordered the young man to scatter. He did without hesitation though inwardly he wished was braver and could have stood up to the Dark Lord on Ariel's behalf. But he couldn't and he left that poor woman alone and defenseless with that deranged wizard.

Voldemort waited until Draco's frightened footfalls disappeared into the second floor before he asked with an exasperated sigh, "Must you undermine me in front of my servants?"

"Must you be so mean to the kid? He's obviously scared shitless of you."

"That's the whole point, mom. It's better to be feared."

"I disagree. I think it's better to be loved."

Voldemort scoffed, shaking his head. "Sometimes I..."

"What?"

"What happened to you? You used to be a murderous queen."

"I was never a murderous queen! I was a pissed-off princess at most for a couple of decades but I've grown since then."

"But what about the Great Viper of the Seas? You used to be the living nightmare for sailors and the British armada! Now, you're so...ugh, kind, and, ugh, compassionate. It's sickening."

"I've always been kind and compassionate. If I wasn't, we never would have met."

Voldemort let out a heavy sigh tilting his head to the ceiling. "I guess..."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I'm sorry for snapping at you." He grunted out awkwardly not used to apologizing.

Ariel gave his cold, colorless hand a soft squeeze of forgiveness. "You can make it up to me by reading me a story."

"But you have a much prettier reading voice than I." He argued as they got up from the table to relocate into the living room.

"I like the sound of your voice."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I always have. When you're not using it be a bigoted asshole anyway."

Voldemort took his seat on the cushion beside her. "Fair enough." He flipped to the end of the book, waited for Ariel to give him the cue to start, then, in his best grade school reading-aloud-to-the-class voice, read her his personal favorite childhood story, "the Tale of the Three Brothers".  
  


"You have a beautiful reading voice," Ariel said, proud, as soon as he closed the book. Voldemort made a disparaging noise. "I mean it! Your voice is soft like a spring breeze when you read."

"That's the most disgusting thing you've ever said to me," he said facetiously.

Ariel smiled, saying nothing for a short while, then added just to annoy him, "And you didn't trip over your words once while you read."

Voldemort rolled his eyes then pushed himself from the couch, announcing, "I'm going to get the boy before he assumes the worst."

"Aw, you're still embarrassed by my praise?" She asked teasingly as he ascended the stairs.

He cut her a sideways glance. His upper lip quirked then stretched into a slanted smile.

He could see a ghost of his boyhood self huddled against the end of the couch behind Ariel, watching them with attention-starved eyes. If only the kid knew, he thought. All those years of dreaming. How often he prayed, back when he was young and foolish enough to think Gods listened to prayers, he would wake up in that piss-soaked cot to Ariel's beautiful voice telling him, I'm taking you home with me. The two of them living in some crummy home, like Spinners End, ending each day together with a bedtime story. Oh, little Tom, those desperate prayers may have fallen on apathetic ears but they weren't the pathetic cries of an orphan with a pipe dream. You just didn't know it was all a part of a contingency. You can have everything you want out of life but some things had to come first. Maybe there never could be an Ariel without there being a Dark Lord first. How would there have been a Bellatrix to bring you back to me had there not been an army of Death Eaters first?

He felt like fate was rewarding him with fulfilling his destiny by giving him a mom finally. That's he went quiet for a moment. Not because he was embarrassed by her love but because he was imagining himself sitting in a throne of his enemies bones, while thousands bowed before his blood-soaked feet, Potter's head impaled on a pike and a crown-wearing Ariel next to, telling him, lovingly, "I'm so proud of you."

* * *

Shortly after Voldemort went to the grab Draco, Nagini woke up from her 3rd nap of the day looked at the couch her master's beloved currently occupied and said to herself, approximately, 'I don't know what that thing is but I'm going to climb the shit out of that.'

And so Nagini maneuvered her twelve-foot-swamp-water-and-oil-colored body out of its loose coil and headed off to do what she damn well wanted.

* * *

Draco fled to the soundproof master bedroom's bathroom to avoid hearing the familiar sounds that follow defying the Dark Lord: the pleas for mercy, the killing curse, and a loud, heart-stopping thud.

He paced the small bathroom floor a thousand times, his head burning with scenarios, convinced that his bad manners were going to get that kind creature killed... or worse (there was always a worst-worst case scenario when it came to the Dark Lord).

Then, the sound of the Dark Lord calling his name yanked him out of his guilt-ridden thoughts. He quickly splashed his face with water, dried away distress, and left, bracing himself for what he imagined was going to be a bloody shitshow.

He was stunned to find the downstairs bloodless but relieved to hear humming instead of screaming. Ariel was on the couch with Nagini, stroking the venomous snake's long body while it slithered triumphantly along the back of the couch.

He looked her over, unconvinced she got away without at least a bruise or a mark. But when Ariel caught his wandering eye, she gave him an unharmed wink.

A floating tea tray had zoomed around him in order to land on the coffee table that appeared out of thin air before the couch. Draco sidestepped in order to give the approaching Dark Lord room to take his position beside Ariel.

"You might as well start on the kitchen," Voldemort said flatly as he handed Ariel a teacup full of dark purple wine. "After that, you can leave."

Draco thanked him, then Ariel then ran into the kitchen, desperate to be done with these menial tasks so he could go home and spend the rest of this miserable year as far away from the Dark Lord as he could.

* * *

Nagini descended from the top of the couch towards the back of the couch where she eventually made contact with the floor and lazily wiggled her huge body towards the kitchen where, in a chewed-out section of the molding, hid one terrified mouse.

* * *

The mouse watched from its little hole in the wall as the beast with no arms headed towards its hiding spot. Fear coursed through the small animal's body, making it jittery, drawing more unwanted attention.

* * *

Nagini was close enough for the mouse to recognize its own reflection within the pair of shiny black eyes when it made the desperate decision to run for its life instead of waiting to die.

* * *

The mouse jumped onto the inside of the wall and started climbing.

Nagini tried cramming herself inside the chewed-out opening but found her head was too big. When that plan failed, she merely followed the sounds of the mouse's claws scratching up the wall.

Ariel watched in amazement as gravity-defying Nagini followed the vertical path of the wall and continue upside down across the ceiling. "What is she doing?"

"She's on the hunt," said Voldemort with pride.

Nagini's heavy body rolled against the wall like a steamroller. No matter how fast the mouse ran, the beast chased after it, matching its speed with sickening ease.

Eventually, Nagini got bored with the chase and she crawled down from the ceiling, into the middle of the kitchen floor, and kept still.

The mouse waited for a few minutes, listening for the snake's movements but when none came, the little mouse took a chance. It scurried as fast as it could out of the opening and into the living room. It was heading towards a second, secret opening in the fireplace that the mouse knew would mean home-free.

She didn't even bother chasing the creature. She merely opened her mouth and shot venom out of her fangs, striking the mouse perfectly.

The mouse made out a terrible, high-pitched squeak, convulsed twice, then collapsed, dead against the stone-made fireplace.

"Good girl," Voldemort hissed in parseltongue.

"Wow, she has…good aim." Ariel remarked as she watched Nagini slither over and gulp the furry corpse down.

"You should see her in combat. I've seen this magnificent beast take down creatures four times her size," said Voldemort as he went to the kitchen.

Ariel watched him then turned her focus to the venomous snake who was wriggling its way back towards her. She watched the predator slink onto the back of the couch and stick its blink-less face into her own, expecting praise. Ariel, fearing nothing, raised her hand and lavished gentle affections onto the viper.

* * *

Draco happened to be sweeping in the living room when it happened.

Nagini, sick of being touched, nipped at the back of Ariel's hand as a way of saying, 'stop fucking touching me', then continued crawling along the sofa doing as she damn well pleased. Ariel drew her hand in time, missing both fangs, but felt the longer tear the back of her hand and leave behind a dripping puncture wound.

Ariel began hyperventilating immediately. "Oh, Cod. Oh, Cod. Oh, Cod..."

(Nagini: "Shouldn't have touched me, four-legged peasant.")

Something shattered behind him. Next thing he knew he was being run down by the Dark Lord. He watched as the Dark Lord rushed to Ariel's side, furiously patting over his robes' pockets in desperate, almost frantic, search for something.

"I'm going to die I'm going to die I'm going to die." Ariel sobbed, staring at her blood-streaked hand, snot bubbling in her right nostril. She whipped her head at Draco and begged, "Tell my sisters I love them."

"You're not going to die," Voldemort shouted, his voice rising out of frustration that he couldn't find the anti-venom fast enough (but, also, because panic crying grated his ears).

But the burning in her chest, nausea in her blood, and the stabbing pain in her hand told her otherwise.

He slapped his breast pocket and felt the tiny vial. He then quickly uncorked it and reached forward to pour the contents down her throat.

"You lie every time you open your fucking mouth!" She lifted her head in time for him to pour the copper-tasting liquid down her open mouth. She stalled. They all did.

She felt…fine.

Nothing hurt. She could breathe as deeply as she wanted. Her hand no longer burned or throbbed. It didn't even bleed. The cut turned out to be no deeper than a cat scratch. It took Ariel three minutes to calm down her deep, panicked breathing.

Voldemort went to touch her back but retracted his hand once he touched cold sweat.

* * *

She came to in a cold room swathed in the navy blues of dusk, vaguely aware that someone was touching her head. She opened her eyes, expecting Voldemort, and was relieved to find her beloved Severus, sitting on the edge of the bed she laid in, stroking her cowlick. When he noticed her awake, they kissed and embraced, grateful to have another day in this horrible world together.

"How did it go?" She asked as he climbed into bed with her.

"Albus thinks he has found another Horcrux."

"But you don't?"

Snape frowned. "Nothing is ever easy when it comes to…"

Ariel stared at the ceiling for a moment in silence then asked, "Where did he find the supposed Horcrux?"

Snape turned his head but hesitated. He thought about lying. To spare her. But then he thought against it, thinking it would be an insult to her intelligence to lie to her when he knew she likely guessed the truth, and he told her, "Where else but a cave?" A lapse of silence passed before he said, "I'm sorry darling."

"Why? I'm not sorry anymore."

"You're not?"

She shook her head eyes still focused on the dark ceiling. "I was there for a kid who needed me." She turned on her side to face him and gave him a small but genuine smile. "Not my fault that kid turned out to be the evilest wizard of all time."

Snape pecked her nose with his lips and said, "I'm happy to hear that."

They held each other in silence for a moment before Snape broke it by saying, "The house looks magnificent."

"Your godson came by and cleaned."

"…Draco Malfoy…cleaned something?"

"Uh-huh. He did it without magic too."

"… _Really_?"

"Swear to Cod. It was a late Saturnalia present to us."

Pause. "Well…I…." Snape faltered then made another, longer pause. "He really cleaned the whole house without magic?"

"You're the one who can read minds."

He opened his mouth to correct her but he was stopped by a growing warmth in his heart. That little shit, he thought tenderly.

  
  



	22. The Many Faces of Tom Riddle

The rest of Ariel's night was punctuated by restless sleep and anxiety. Despite what she told Severus, she continued to agonize over her role in the rise of Lord Voldemort. How could she not? If you were told tomorrow your good intentions caused the suffering of millions, wouldn't you flay yourself with shame as well? Why did she lie then? Well, the same reason we tell ourselves we'll be a better version of ourselves tomorrow. She wanted it to be true. She wanted it to be true the same way Tom wanted her to be his biological mother.

But this double-sided life was weighing her down. She didn't know how Severus did it for so long. The constant inner ethical turmoil, the perpetual fear of being caught, the endless shame... It was enough to drive her insane and she had only done this for a few months! How could she continue going on like this? She asked herself. Ariel's mind raced until the wee hours of dawn searching for the right answers, the right plan of action.

Then, the glorious epiphany entered her mind with the same dazzling brilliance as the coming dawn. It sent her flying out of the warmth of her bed, accidentally waking Severus in the process.

"Where are you going, darling?" He asked, drowsily.

"I'll be right back," she vowed as she bent over him to plant a kiss on his forehead. He tried to ask more questions but she cut him off with a soft whisper, "Go back to bed angelfish." The wizard fell back asleep instantly. Ariel smiled at her snoring lover, went to her messenger bag pulled out an empty vial, filled it with sink water then rushed downstairs towards the fireplace.

* * *

After Voldemort dropped Draco off to Malfoy Manor (literally too; poor Draco fell ten feet from thin air just to land in a pile of mud and peacock shit), he did what he normally did when he was upset: slaughtering muggles.

Of course, no matter how many families he decimated; no matter how many lives he stomped out with a wave of his wand; no matter how much rage he poured into those killing curses; none of that assuaged the stabbing pain in his head or the implosive fear in his heart that told him he had lost Ariel for good.

It took sixteen bodies for him to admit he couldn't murder his problems away and he finally fled to the one place he knew nobody would look for him.

* * *

Physically, he was alone in that dark cave off the coast of an icy beach but mentally he was in a dark cave with two of the most annoying ghosts to ever exist.

Prepubescent Tom took it the hardest.

"I hate you!" The eight-year-old boy screamed, punching and kicking the Dark Lord who took the abuse without resistance. "This is all your fault!"

"I know." He said with a dejected sigh. He was lying flat against the wet sand, staring at the abject darkness.

"Who needs her?" An older, handsome Tom scoffed from the near distance. He was lounging in the sand, aloof. Too good for banalities like feelings. "We did just fine before and after she came along."

"Shut up! You don't know anything!" Little Tom screeched, eyes brimming with hot tears.

"Be quiet, you. Children should be seen not heard." Young Adult Tom sneered as he got from his imaginary feet to glide over his current self. "C'mon Voldemort. Chin up. Look at all you've done on your own. You're a half-blood. The bastard spawn of a silly witch and muggle scum. Yet you have purebloods worshipping your every move. You're so powerful your very name strikes fear into the hearts of millions. And in less than a year, you're going to be so powerful not even Death will be able to stop you. You've done more than most wizards will do in a thousand lifetimes. So why are you wasting time wallowing over whether or not some walking fish loves you?" Young Adult Tom punctuated his speech by shooting the child who was trying hard to rub away his tears a look of pure disgust.

But Voldemort didn't respond. His eyes were still set on the blackness above with unfocus.

"What's more important?" The young man asked, leaning closer, his eyes still narrowed on the emotional child. "Being the greatest wizard who ever lived, becoming a literal God, or being mediocre and happy?"

Without turning his head, Voldemort pulled out his wand, pointed it directly at his young adult self, and hollered, "Crucio!"

The young man disappeared in a red flash and the curse shot into the mouth of the cave-like a ballistic, colliding into the cave with a thunderous BOOM. Rock fragments rained down onto the remaining Toms but Voldemort cast a shielding spell above his head and the fragments dissolved into dust. Once the dust settled, Voldemort told the invisible child, "Don't listen to him. He doesn't know jack shit."

The ghost child glared at him, two tears in his right eye and one in the left, but he kept looking into the mouth of the cave, wondering what it would be like to be swallowed up by a black hole.

* * *

Ariel went to Malfoy manor first, thinking he would be there either torturing the Malfoys or torturing someone else at the illustrious manor.

She found, of all people, Bellatrix awake in the living room. To her stunned horror, the curly-headed witch was bent over a blood-drawn ruin, wherein the center of that symbol, sat a doll made of straw wrapped up in a frayed ash black fabric that she couldn't help but noticed matched the same color of Voldemort's robes reading from a book titled, "De Amore Libri."

"Oh, good morning Lady Ariel." Bellatrix greeted without an ounce of shame. "The Dark Lord isn't here if that's who you are looking for."

"I...guessed that," Ariel replied, still in shock. "Um...uhhhhhh...I'm going to... ignore all of this if you do me a small favor."

"Whatever it is, it would be an honor to serve the Dark Lord's mother." Bellatrix avowed rising to her feet to get uncomfortably close to Ariel, adding with a sultry whisper, "And I mean that in every way possible."

Ariel held back the urge to gag. Her breath smelled like her ass and her mouth switched places. "You know I'm dating Severus right?"

"Yeah but if you ever get sick of men..." She punctuated her sentence with a click of her tongue and a wink.

"Oh...n...no. No, thank you." Ariel said. When Bellatrix wouldn't move away, she added, "I'm going to need you to take a couple of steps back and also never do...any of that again."

"Can't blame a witch for trying," muttered Bellatrix as she backed away. From the allotted distance she asked, "What can I do for you, Lady Ariel?"

"I need you to take me somewhere."

"Where?"

* * *

They landed on a cold blustery deserted beach at the opening of a cave. In a rare moment of tact, Bellatrix left as quickly as she appeared leaving Ariel to be pelted by gelid piercing winter winds and sending her flying for the cover into the opening of the cave.

No sooner had her feet crossed the invisible threshold into the cave did the cold winds cease completely as if never existed and the freezing climate was replaced by a warm tropical atmosphere. She paused, catching her breath, allowing the cold to thaw from her body while she stared into the impenetrable darkness that lead to the bowels of the cave.

"Tom?" She called out. "Tom are you here?"

Moments later, Voldemort crossed over into the light like a ghost sliding out of one realm and into the next. He had his wand out and he wore an unreadable expression.

"How did you get here?" He asked, stiffly.

"Bellatrix dropped me off."

"Oh."

There was an awkward pause. "She's uh...got a bit of a crush on you."

He let out an exasperated sigh. "Trust me, I'm aware." He paused, looking her over. "How does your hand feel?"

She looked at the back of her hand where a thin, shallow cut the width and length of a stray cat hair remained. "Fine."

"Good."

There was a small silence then Ariel uttered the worst phrase in the English language, "Can we talk?"

He frowned, hard. "You're disowning me." He said it with the finality of someone who knew this day was coming for a long time.

"I didn't say that." But he has already turned away from her as if trying to avoid an assault. "Tom. Please. Look at me." He wouldn't turn his head. "Look at me!"

He felt his autonomy slip away from his body as his head turned towards her against his will. He tried to be vindictive and refuse her gaze, but his eyeballs betrayed him and focused on her.

She brandished a tiny translucent vial. "I'm sure you can guess what this is." She twisted the top and use a dropper to deliver precisely three drops of the clear, odorless liquid onto her tongue. She caught his eye and gave him a waiting smile.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Because I want to be able to trust you, Tom. But I know trust goes both ways." She outstretched her hand holding the vial.

Voldemort stalled.

"Don't do it," young adult Tom hissed. "What if this is a trick?"

His free hand hovered over against his thigh, stiff with paranoia. But then he glanced down and saw his younger self clinging to her dress, pressing himself into her leg like she would fly away at any second if he didn't anchor her down. He took the vial and downed the rest of the contents in a single gulp. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he noticed was the shocked look in her face.

"You really do love me, don't you?" Ariel said her voice cracked with emotions.

"I thought I made it painfully clear by now that I do." He replied, annoyed.

Ariel gave him a shiny-eyed smile. "I just like hearing it."

"Of course I—Ariel I love you more than I love anyone or anything in this entire universe. I love you more than I love myself and I love myself way too fucking much." Ariel smiled so hard her face looked like it was going to crack down the middle. "I can't believe you didn't know that by now." He said, offended.

"I always knew Tom loved me..." Ariel began. "But Lord Voldemort's a different story."

His mouth quirked like he was struggling not to cry. "Neither Tom nor Voldemort would ever hurt you."

Ariel gave him a pained look. "I want to believe you."

"I swear." He said, half-pleading. After a short beat, he insisted, "Go on. Ask me anything."

She hesitated. There was so much she wanted to ask and now that she had the chance she didn't know where to begin. She started with the one question she always wanted to know. "How many creatures have you killed?"

He pondered this question for an uncomfortably long time. "I've lost count. But if I had to guess...personally...in the tens of thousands."

"For Poseidon's sake..."

"You wanted the truth."

"I did." She paused then asked, "Is it true... is it true you made a spell that can turn people inside out?"

Inverto Homonous, he thought fondly. One of his finest inventions. "I don't want to brag but... yes. How did you hear about that?"

"Some sharks found...a few of the corpses and told the rest of the ocean."

"Oh."

Ariel went quiet for a second then asked, "Is it true about you split your soul seven times?"

"Yes."

She went quiet again then asked, voice dripping with morbid curiosity, "What's it like?"

"Imagine you broke every bone in your body at once, got set on fire and someone cuts your heart out of your chest all at the same time."

"For fucks sake, and you did that to yourself seven times?"

"I would've done more but by the seventh one I lost my nose, all my hair, I was afraid the eighth one would've costed my penis." When Ariel gave him a flummoxed look, he added, "Hey you wanted honesty. This is why I always tried to give you half-truths. At least it wasn't as disgusting as the real truth and less offensive as a bald-faced lie."

"I feel so special."

"You should."

There was a small stretch of silence.

"Okay your turn," said Ariel. "Ask me anything."

"Ask her what her favorite animal is!" Little Tom cried.

"No-no-no! Ask her if she's proud of us!" Young Adult Tom's ghost insisted. "Then ask for specifics."

"I thought you didn't care about her opinion." Little Tom retorted.

"No one was talking to you," snapped young adult Tom. To Voldemort, he said, "Ask her if she's proud of us!"

But Voldemort asked, "Do you regret not drowning me when you had the chance?"

Ariel blinked, stricken.

He didn't know where that question came from for it did not come from a place of remorse or even a niggling of regret. To him, the atrocities, the murders, the various crimes he committed or had others commit on his behalf, were all a part of this life he made for himself. But he knew what he was. At best, a soulless wretch. At worst, a monster. So, he needed to know, could she accept him? Or was she like his inner child, clinging desperately to a false memory?

"Of course not." She said softly, tears rolling down her face. "Why would you ask me—"

"I had to make sure." He said as he wordlessly conjured a handkerchief with his wand and handed it to her. "For some reason, I have a hard time believing people aren't always trying to kill me."

"I wonder why." She replied with a sarcastic laugh as she dried her face.

He chuckled briefly then went quiet for a few seconds and asked, "Did you tell Draco Malfoy the Sebastian story?"

Ariel froze with the cloth held against her face, looking guiltier than a dog with frosting all over its face.

But he was snickering and grinning broadly at her. "Why do you have such a soft spot for pathetic boys?"

Ariel smiled and gave him a two-shouldered shrug.

He smiled at her, heart aflame. "Well, those were the only things I wanted to know. Got any more questions for me?"

She had tons more. "Is it true you put a tracker on your name?"

"Yes. Although, admittedly, I only recently did so."

"Is it true you had a basilisk for a pet?"

"Yes."

Ariel's mouth fell to the floor. "You mean you had a real-life basilisk for a pet?"

"I summoned her and everything."

"Oh, I'm so jealous, I've always wanted to see a basilisk. What was her name?"

"Volumnia."

"Aww! I love that name."

"I miss that beast. She was a fine pet. Much better behaved than Nagini anyway."

"I thought you loved that monster."

"I do but she's such a snot most of the time."

"Just like her owner." She giggled.

Voldemort let out a hearty laugh that filled the whole cave. One that bounced off of the high ceiling and carried away by echoes and latched onto Ariel who joined in with her own hiss-like snickers. Then the laughter died and was topped with more comfortable silence.

"Why did you need that book so badly?"

"Which book?"

"The black one. The one you were looking for when we visited my sisters."

"Oh." He started but then stopped himself. He told her smiling, "That? That would be easier to just show you."

Holding his blazing wand above him like a torch, he held out his other hand for her, which she took with only small hesitation, and led her through the curtain of darkness that leads into the heart of the cave.

He was a considerate guide, letting her use him for balance, helping her over the boulders and down into the cove.

Ahead, in the lake, stood what looked like a birdbath.

It was then that Ariel caught a whiff of something sweet and pungent. Something she'd never smelled before.

He lobbed the flame protruding from his wand into the ceiling where it arched and exploded like a firecracker where the tendrils of light hung in the air and froze into the shape of a chandelier. His spell illuminated the entire cave like he created his very own sun and Ariel marveled, mouth open, at his work.

Then she looked down and saw a legion of rotted corpses standing upright and staring directly at her.

She drew a sharp breath, preparing a scream that would've blown every last one of them to smithereens, but Voldemort silenced her by taking her by the upper arm and swearing, quickly and with vehemence, "They're not going to hurt you! They're not going to hurt you!" She looked him in the face then gawked at the shambling masses of half-decomposed, half-falling-apart corpses. "Trust me. I've trained them not to."

"What the actual fuck are they?!"

"Inferi."

"You know I don't know what that means!"

"It means I," He said with a flourish of his arm, like he was an artist showing off their latest project, "Have an army of undead bodies. Who do as I command. Who attack without pain."

Ariel was utterly speechless. She merely stared at the undead army in thunderstruck agog as they groaned and rasped hungrily and roared at the irritating light and meandered about mindlessly.

"Merlin's beard," said Voldemort with a small proud chuckle, "You're speechless. I left a siren speechless."

Ariel let out a sigh of incredulity. "This—you—" She pulled her gaze away from the undead and looked at him with genuine absorption. "Wow. You really have your own undead army." She looked back at the zombies and said in soft awe, "Holy shit..."

Voldemort stood there, tall and smug, in her impressed silence.

"You always knew I'd be great in whatever I did." He said after a while. She glanced at him. He was wearing an arrogant smile.

"Truth be told I thought you'd just be a teacher or something."

He let out a wheezy little laugh. "That's exactly what I thought too. Oh... who would have guessed?"

Ariel said nothing.

"I'm glad we did this. Honestly."

Ariel's face twisted into an involuntary grin. Then she slid her hand into his and gave it a tight squeeze. "I'm glad too. Let's get out of here."

So they went.  
  
 ~~  
  
~~

* * *

It was the start of the spring semester and Dumbledore was pissed.

"Every year it's something!" He raved from his desk, throwing his bad hand in the air while his good hand cradled a bottle of Firewhiskey. "Every year! Merlin's beard I can't wait to die."

Snape couldn't blame the wizard. He had just informed him of Ariel's discovery that on top of having 7 Horcruxes, they now knew for certain the rumors of Voldemort having an army of ravenous, undead, unfeeling beasts at his disposal was in fact not bullshit as they hoped.

Dumbledore took a swig of the liquor bottle and rasped loudly. He despised the stuff. The smell, the taste, it was all vile, but he was tired of the pain that coursed from his fingers to his core and sometimes traveled down his nerves, making his hands gnarly shaky and weak. And worse, his body was constantly cold and clammy. Drinking warmed his cheeks and gave him the fire he needed to remember what he was staying alive for: to take Tom cockface Riddle down once and for all.

He sighed heavily once the warmth flooded over him dropped his head back into his comfy office chair, and told Snape, "Send that poor unfortunate soul my deepest thanks."

"I will."

Dumbledore smiled at him and after a small pause asked, "Did you have a, somewhat, lovely break?"

"I did."

Dumbledore's smile faltered slightly when he said, with great disdain, "I hope that...boy of hers doesn't torture you too much."

"Actually, he doesn't bother me at all. He and Ariel only visit each other, at most, once a week, and every time I enter the room he makes an excuse to leave."

"That surprises me. For as long as I've known that brat he was never one to share or play well with others."

Snape let out a deep sigh and shook his head. "I'm worried about her."

Dumbledore frowned. "Do you think she'd..."

"I'm not worried she'll betray us. She's made it very clear she despises his actions more than anyone. But... I'm worried... I'm worried when it will come time to...she won't be able to live with the guilt."

Dumbledore frowned hard. "She might not." He said with the glum sadness of a man well acquainted with resentments and shame. Then in a brighter tone, he said, "That's why you should marry this creature. So you can spend the rest of your life telling her she has nothing to feel guilty about."

"Stop trying to play matchmaker, old man."

"I can't help it. You know I'm a hopeless busybody."

Snape smirked involuntary then stiffened his face and said in his usual seriousness, "When are you going to the cave with Potter?"

"Soon."

"Good."

"Any new developments with my soon-to-be assassin?"

Snape sneered, "Stop calling him that."

"I'm sorry. Forgive a dying man's crude attempt at gallows humor."

"You can't keep using the dying card to keep being a wanker."

"Watch me."

Snape shot him a piercing glare then after a few minutes of seething informed, "He doesn't speak to me. And he hasn't for months."

"Do you think he'll speak to Ariel?"

"He'll see right through that. Besides, I loathe how much we use her already. Heavens forbid if that deranged man—" His sentence ended in a fury of sputters and dreaded silence. His hopeless silence thickened the air which Dumbledore broke with his light airy voice, "She's doing enough for us. Besides I'm sure Mr Malfoy will make himself known in one way or another. Maybe if I'll luck out and he'll kill me with kindness."

Snape made a small smile in spite of himself. "You and your optimism." Then after a small silence, he added, "I'm going to miss you."

The old headmaster gave him a tender eyed smile, his face glowing with endearment. Then he tilted the neck of his bottle towards Snape and asked, "Will you drink with me now, Severus? As per an old dying man's request?"

A sly smile broke out of Snape's grudging face before he relented and took a swig of Firewhiskey.

* * *

Unsurprisingly, that night of his meeting with Dumbledore, Snape was summoned by the Dark Lord.

He held the meeting in a rundown castle on the outskirts of Brasov. When Snape found him, the Dark Lord was standing before a dark almond-shaped window watching the midnight sky.

"Severus," he said amicably turning his attention to the witch. "How was your winter break?"

"It was fine, my Lord. Thank you for asking. Ariel sends her love."

Voldemort gave him an odd smile when Snape didn't elaborate any further than asked after another short beat, "Any announcements you'd like to make?"

"No it grieves me to report that there have been no changes since I last spoke with you, my Lord. Albus is still dying—" (Voldemort laughed) "and still desperately searching for the location of your Horcruxes." ("Good luck.") "He and Potter remains as ignorant as ever of your true plans. And, from what I know, Draco hasn't made any more attempts on the old man's life."

Voldemort's deformed mouth widened and curled into a broad grin. "Anything else?"

"No sir. Everything is as it was when we last spoke." Snape said calmly.

Voldemort's eyes squinted slightly as if confused. "You... didn't make any...life-changing decisions over the holidays?"

"None that I am aware of, my lord."

"Damn." His face dropped. He appeared mildly disappointed. "I lost the pool." Noticing his follower's visible incomprehension, he explained, "There's a bet going around on when you'd beg her to marry you. I guessed around New Years'."

He said it so casually. Snape was thunderstruck.

"Damn I really thought—" Voldemort began still annoyed he was wrong and lost the wager.

"My Lord, you're—is this you're way of saying I have your blessing?"

"Blessing?" He said with a cold laugh. "You don't need my blessing," he said with an irritable hiss. All docility disappeared in an instant from his face. He was like a garter snake that turned into a rattlesnake ready to strike "This isn't the Muggle world Severus. Should she marry you that's her prerogative. And should she marry you I will support her decision entirely and be giddy as a fucking puppy for her because I think Ariel deserves to be happy. But should she refuse your proposal and or dump your ass because you know, she's a masterpiece and you're a pale greasy old shoe smelling atrocity, or worse, because you mistreated her in some way, my prerogative will be to saw off your head and skullfuck—"

"My Lord," Snape cut pleadingly. "Ariel is the love of my life. I adore that creature. I want to spend the rest of my life earning her love, worshipping her the way she deserves. And should she decide one day that she isn't happy with me anymore and does leave me I'll be grateful to have her in my life as long as I did."

For one awful second the Dark Lord stared at him, injecting himself into his mind, determining his lies. But then an instant later the Dark Lord's face softened and the hardness in his voice creased when he said, "I don't doubt that Severus. And as it stands, no, I wouldn't be upset if you two were to marry. I wouldn't go to the wedding because I think they're boring and the idea of marriage as a legally binding contract as idiotic but I'd send a gift and try not to torture you too much for being her husband."

"My Lord... I have no idea what to say."

"Treat her well." He replied simply. Then in a slightly lower voice, "She deserves it."

"Trust me, my lord," said Snape, "I think I love her almost as much as you love her."

His obvious flattery garnered a real smile out of Voldemort. He patted Snape on the shoulder winked at him and said, "'Almost'. Good answer." After a pause, his face turned somber and his hand returned to his side. "There's a second reason I called you here tonight." He dug into the pockets of his robe and took out four vials. He handed two to Snape then downed his lot like shots of copper and puke flavored liquor. Snape watched his master's bald head start to sprout red hair and his tall slightly doughy stature shorten and slender. Within seconds Ariel stood in Voldemort's robes, held his wand, and bore his broad bastard's grin. When Snape's stares lingered he told the wizard, in Ariel's melic mezzo, "Any day now. We only have so many hours to kill."

Snape took his potion and watched the midnight saturated window as he transformed into another Ariel.

"What is all this for, My Lord?" Snape asked with Ariel's melodic voice.

"We're going to go pay the Ministry of Magic a visit, Severus," Voldemort replied as he began the process of shredding his clothes into that of a tattered dress. "You're going to sit there and pretend to be catatonic while I am going to feed them sob stories about how I," he straightened and started sobbing on cue, and in a mask of anguish and suffering, said, "'He-Who-M-Must-Not-Be-Named kept me as a sex slave and—and—and he used to brag about how he's going to blow the Croatian Sea Organ on May 2nd'."

"Feed them false leads?"

"Exactly," said Voldemort in a voice so flat and devoid of emotion it turned the hairs on the back of Snape's neck into porcupine quills. It didn't help in Ariel's sweet voice with her angelic face it only doubled his dread. Then in a brighter voice, he said, "I'm Aria and you're my sister Adella and we've been held hostage by Lord Voldemort for the last 4 months."

Snape didn't say a word. He merely stood there wearing the same dour expression he usually bore.

"Perfect."

* * *

The whisper network told him Scrimgeour had taken up in a family friend's unused summer cottage. "Apparently, he doesn't feel safe at home," Voldemort said with a boisterous laugh. Snape felt a burning hatred for him. How dare he use Ariel's body and voice to deceive and create havoc but all he could do was stand there, his wand burning in his pocket with bitter impotence, as Voldemort tapped his shoulder and stole him away. The two of them showed up on Scrimgeour's doorstep covered from head to toe in blood-soaked rags looking like the twin faces of pure misery. Voldemort even gave Ariel's clone a black eye and a cut on their shared collar bone to play up the story.

When Scrimgeour opened the door to find them, his heart broke instantly for the pair. It was too easy for Voldemort, with Ariel's magical voice and his talents for manipulating others, to make the minister of magic believe a hundred or so lies: how they were twins that were kidnapped during a sister's day shopping spree at Diagonalley ("there was just this explosion... then I looked up it was just You Know Who and five dead bodies...") how for the last few months they'd been kept in a room with no windows and kept as sex objects; how eventually He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named started confiding in them about future plans (the scheme to blow up Stonehenge, recruiting gnomes and invading Iceland) and how, after a daring miraculous escape, they came to that cottage in the middle of nowhere with the earnest hope to be apart of the team "to thwart his diabolical plans"

Rufus believed it all.

"This is incredible," he said breathlessly as his charmed quill furiously transcribed all the fake plans. "You're so brave for doing this."

Voldemort held the back of Ariel's hand to her face in a gesture that Scrimgeour thought was to conceal a sob but Snape knew was to hide a snigger.

* * *

After a few hours, Voldemort begged for an escort home which Scrimgeour was glad to oblige. He sent two veteran Aurors who jumped at the chance to do this favor, to be the knights in sleek robes for a pair of damsels in distress.

Snape kept his head low the entire time but every once and a while he'd steal a sideways glance towards Voldemort and catch him smirking behind Ariel's beautiful hands.

* * *

"That went better than I hoped," Voldemort remarked with glee as he, back in his regular body, toed the stiffening corpse of Hippagibble Jukkas, an Auror who Snape knew was two days away from retirement. The poor man died where he stood which sadly was the barren, unlit living room of the Old Gaunt Place. "Ugh. I always hated that guy. Glad he's dead finally."

Snape said nothing as he turned his head and looked everywhere besides the slain body of the wizard he just murdered. Thomas Fiddlebicker, newly retired. A longtime friend of Scrimgeour. Imaging the old lion-faced wizard's reaction from finding out a close friend had been murdered combined with the guilt of being that murderer, pained him like a repeated stab to the chest.

"I should start by sending fewer people on missions. Whenever there are too many people there's too many chances to fuck up."

Snape said nothing while the Dark Lord sawed off the wizards head with his wand and after enough blood poured out the wizard to fill a bathtub, picked up the severed head, studied it for a moment with a vague smile, then kicked it into an empty corner where it bounced off the cobwebbed wall and landed, upright, with a loud squishy like thud that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his life.

* * *

Eventually, Snape was dismissed. When he went home he found Ariel was reading in bed, eagerly waiting for his return.

"Dear husband," she said passionately as they kissed. "I'm so glad you're back."

"As am I, my dear beautiful brilliant wife, as am I."

* * *

**NEW YEAR'S DAY**

The decision came out of nowhere. They were reading quietly on the couch together when Snape looked up from his book and found himself staring at Ariel, his heart burning with profound love. He began listing all the things he loved about her: things beyond her beauty and her kindness, small things like how she hummed when she was happy and sang when she was sad; how her nose turned upward when she was mad; how she easily she cried whenever she spotted a cute animal; how she was quick to forgive and quicker to understand. He could've written a list on a mile-long parchment in all the ways he adored her which is why, out of nowhere, he asked her, "Will you marry me?"

Ariel looked up from her copy of Potions Heads Monthly, in stunned silence. He reached over and took her hand, explaining, "I know it's sudden. But with everything going on, I'd be honored if I could spend the last few years of my life being your husband."

Ariel listened to his speech in teary-eyed silence. When he finished, she plunged forward, wrapping her arms around his neck and told him, after a thousand kisses, "Yes, yes, of course."

* * *

The two married that night on that nameless beach underneath a bright purple moon in a ceremony that took less than five minutes with Attina as the officiant and the rest of Ariel's sisters, and Narcissa, Snape's only guest and the only person he trusted to keep this a secret, as witnesses.

"Do you Severus—" Attina asked the man in a black suit with the pink rose in his lapel, as the ten of them stood waist-deep in lilac waters.

"Absolutely."

"And Ariel, do you—" She asked her emerald gowned sister.

"Yes!"

"Well," Attina said with a happy laugh as the witnesses broke out into overjoyed cheers, drowning out the eldest sister's voice as she tried to continue, "With this I now pronounce you two—"

Neither of them waited to hear the rest of the announcement before they pulled each other into a passionate kiss cementing their decision to spend the rest of this Hellish lifetime together, whatever that might entail.  
  



	23. Mother-Son Mondays

Voldemort wasn't much of a singer but thankfully with Ariel's voice, he could sing a Hungarian Horntail into letting him ride its back, literally.

As he and his two-ton fire breathing death machine soared through the troposphere, intent on _persuading_ a clan of mountain trolls to join him as allies in the noble cause, he screamed and kept his arms out to his sides like he was an airplane the entire time.

* * *

When Ariel went downstairs that next morning, she found an ocean of flowers awaiting her. All kinds: sunflowers, lilacs, lilies, tulips, foxgloves, rare ones like the iridescent fire irises of Iran, and roses in every hue even blue and aquamarine. Vases of these beautiful flowers occupied every flat surface of that one room and it smelled so fragrant and divine it was like stepping into a small paradise. She beamed immediately at Voldemort who stood in the middle of it and acted earnest when he explained, "I didn't know which was your favorite so I made the florist give me every flower known in the world."

"Oh Tommy," she said, feeling cherished and ready to dote the hell out him when a thought crossed her mind and her face changed. "Wait. Why did you get me flowers? Is someone dead?"

"They might be. People die every day. I'm not responsible for all the deaths in the world."

"Just some of them."

"Yes, but I still did just get you flowers because I love you and I thought that's what people do when they love their moms."

Ariel gave him a sardonic smile. "I wouldn't know."

"Oh yeah, I forgot you were in the dead mother club."

She laughed a little but then she got visibly sad as her thoughts inevitably drifted to her mother, who she never knew and only knew through the stories she heard, for Athena died when she was very young, and, who she realized then and there for the first time with heart-shattering horror, she'll have outlived for nearly two centuries, more years than her mother ever lived.

Voldemort, knowing her thoughts, said, "It's such an awful club."

"Yeah," she said with another sad laugh as her eyes teemed with tears. She looked to the side in embarrassment but then saw the flowers and she gave them a closed-lipped smile. "Thanks for the flowers."

"Anytime, mom."

* * *

He made her breakfast or lunch depending on the time (with magic of course); he would charm the dishes to clean themselves, make them tea, and ask about her week and her sisters ("I love Arista but she kills every single one of her lovers then complains about being lonely all the time. Like, sissy, you wouldn't be lonely if you just kept three of them alive!" "Some people just can't be helped."); then they'd talk until dinner or until Severus came back from work and then he'd shower her with last-minute affections, tease Severus for being her husband and leave without hurting anybody.

After which Ariel would repeat everything said during their conversations to Severus and he would relay any messages sent by Dumbledore.

It went this way for months.

* * *

"Can you incapacitate him all day the next time you meet?" Snape asked one day in June.

"Yes," Ariel said confidently.

* * *

She used a play from Narcissa handbook to ensure Dumbledore and Potter could explore that cave wouldn't running into her son.

"Would you judge me if I sirened up this tea?"

"You could butcher a newborn in front of me and I wouldn't judge you."

She uncorked a bottle of rum and filled her teacup. Then she shook the bottle at him invitingly.

He held out his cup and she filled it before they toasted to their Mother-Son Mondays.

"So, how's..." he passed out face-first into the kitchen table before he could finish his sentence.  
  
Ariel dumped her drink into the sink, then poured the rest of the sleeping draught spiked rum down the drain as well. Then she turned to her drooling monster. 

* * *

When he woke up the world was black and there was something covering his face. He thrashed for his wand then shot upward, pointing his arm straight out at—Ariel.

He was in a bed, safe and sound and she had come to check in on him.

He dropped his wand immediately. "Sorry, I thought—" he held his head suddenly slammed by nausea "Fuck me."

"You know you're a lightweight for an evil wizard." She said as she took a seat on the edge of the bed. "You barely had half a cup before you were passed out."

He chuckled, rubbing his temples. "Maybe you're just an alcoholic."

"Maybe." She said and they laughed.

"What time is it?"

"It's almost midnight."

He tried to remember when he first arrived to visit. It had to have been no later than noon. Did he really sleep twelve hours? That was more than six times what he normally slept.

"Wow. I haven't slept that long...in my entire life."

"You must have needed it."

He didn't agree. Inwardly, he suspected that he never felt safe enough to sleep for that long—to let his body surrender to such a vulnerable state when there were always foes afoot—but for the first time in his life, he could trust someone to protect him. He could feel at home, sleep in this bed in his mother's house, and rest, knowing she was nearby.

He never felt more loved or cherished in that moment than he ever had in his entire life. He couldn't physically handle it. He started to convulse. His face turned a dark blue as his breath went ragged. Soon he was hyperventilating and, to Ariel's horror, the corners of his eyes misted. Before she could react, he threw his arms around her waist and sobbed into her abdomen for ten minutes straight, telling her in croaky wails, how much he loved her, and how he would never hurt her and how she had to promise to never, ever, leave him.

* * *

As they wept and made a thousand impossible promises to another, the world would wake to the news that the Headmaster of Hogwarts, _the_ Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, was murdered by Death Eaters.


	24. Love and Rage

Chapter 27: Love and Rage

One would think that after successfully getting away with murder and escaping to a luxurious log cabin in the middle of the picturesque mountains of Brasov Bellatrix would be happy but she wasn't.

"You glory stealing cunt!" She roared at Snape wand raised and pointed at his jugular.

Draco slapped his aunt's wand and shouted, "I wasn't going to kill him! I'm not a murderer, Aunt Bella."

The look on her face one would have thought he had admitted to cannibalism. "Don't say things like that Draco."

"It's true. I wasn't going to kill him." He said with a voice strained with shame. He knew what he was admitting.

"You were just... nervous. There were too many people—"

"I couldn't do it even if I knew I could get away with it. I couldn't do it." He dropped his head.

Bellatrix went deadly still face ashen. Then her face changed to that of heartbreak, then of disappointment and disgust. "So spoiled. All the Dark Lord has done for us and he asks you to kill a man that's already half-dead and you refuse." She sneered, saying it with such disdain as if the words tasted as horrible as they sounded to him.

Draco hung his head in shame.

"I'm disgusted with you." She said. With that, she turned on her heel and disappeared.

For a while neither of them said anything. They merely stood on opposite sides of the room avoiding eye contact. But then eventually Draco broke the silence and asked, in the tiniest most pathetic little voice, "Am I going to die?"

Severus's heart broke immediately. For he didn't know. But of course, he lied. "No. You are not going to die. Not tonight."

"How do you know?" He demanded, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

"Because I won't let him."

Draco ran into him and clamored onto him as he used to when he was five. Severus stood there still while silent tears ran down his worn-out face.

* * *

"You must think I'm the clingiest witch..." Voldemort joked, his head resting against her thigh, ashamed of the tear marks he left on her dress.

"I love it," she confessed, tracing the shape of his ear with her index finger like old times. "I love clingy."

"Don't tell me that," he snickered misty-eyed. "You'll never get rid of me."

His choice of words pained her greatly. It's why she stopped tracing his ear and said in a desperate plea, "You don't have to do this."

He lifted his head up, confused.

She held his gaze then said, "You don't have to do this." She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. "Please. Let the boy live, Tom, please. You don't have to be this person. You're better than this, Tom."

He looked at her hand and when he looked up at her his face had hardened. He tugged his hand out of hers and said, his voice clear and hard as diamond, "This isn't about Potter. This is about removing witches and magical folks out from the rocks of oppression shadows of muggles and mud bloods. This is about making sure they don't burn any more of our kind at the stakes. This is about—"

"This is about you achieving apotheosis! Don't lie to me. I know you, Tom. You want so badly to be immortal you’ll take the whole world down with you! And exploiting people's hates and fears into getting what you want!"

He gnashed his teeth, eyes flared. "Must be so easy for you to judge. I forgot, mom, how many deaths did you cause during the 1840s? Hmm? Last time I checked you decimated a third of the Scottish sailing community."

"I've changed Tom. I got better."

"Did you? Look at your life. Your only friends are murderers and thieves. Your husband's a Death Eater. You claim to be miss ethics but you don't seem to mind lying to your sisters about me. You have a voice so powerful you could probably rule the world for good but you waste it getting fucked by some greasy half-blood—"

His speech ended when Ariel's palm collided with his cheek.

He didn't even flinch. He merely met her glares with his own.

They were still glaring at another when Snape arrived to make the announcement of Dumbledore's death.

"My Lord," he began but neither of them turned their heads to acknowledge his entrance.

"You know why we met ma?" Voldemort told her in a cold unfeeling voice that Snape and the rest of his followers most associated with him. He leaned forward and said, "Remember those two kids from the orphanage? The ones who came into the cave with me? I lead them in there. I was going to kill them. I planned on bashing their heads in. That's why we met. Not because you were kind but because I was what I am now—I am a god of death. And soon, no one will be able to stop me."

Ariel didn't say a word. Her mouth screwed tight, nose hooked upward, her blue eyes running.

He got up and addressed Snape for the first time. "You better have good news."

"He's dead, My Lord."

He let out a cold laugh them turned his head at Ariel and said, vindictively, "Good." Then he pushed himself from the bed and stride out of the room, demanding, "Make sure she's transported to the safe house."

"Don't come near me." She ordered, snapping her head at Snape who, every time he tried to draw closer to her, to whisk her somewhere safe for the look of disdain in Voldemort's eyes petrified him to his core, he was forced away like they were two opposing magnets. Then she whipped her head at her son, mouth opened ready to use her voice but he was too quick.

"Silencio!"

Her voice was snuffed out like a candle flame. She stood stricken, mouth hanging open uselessly, underneath Voldemort's rueful smile. He laughed in her face. "Catfish got your tongue?"

She glowered, quacking with rage. He smiled, victoriously until Ariel threw her entire body at him. He reacted fast, but she caught onto him, and when he disappeared he took her with him.

* * *

They landed, hard, into a plot of sand just before the cave where she knew he was going. She was all arms and hands trying to pin him down but Voldemort shoved her off of him. She fell on her side. She was picking herself up, ready to charge him, when she looked and saw his wand pointed directly at her nose.

His face was that of such pure loathing, burning, eyes narrowed with that terrible glint in his eyes that she saw all those months ago, when she was just a kidnapped enemy, before she was special to him. His mouth was a tight line. Then a horrible second later, his lips parted wide when he threw his arm above his head.

She turned her head.

"CRUCIO!"

She expected pain. Instead, she was met with the sounds of rumbles as the world violently shook. She opened her eyes in alarm expecting the earth to collapse underneath her and swallow her whole. But it didn't though.

Something crashed behind her and when she looked over her shoulder she saw that the cave—their cave—had fallen in on itself. Boulders filled the entranceway sealing it off to all, no doubt crushing the hundreds or so inferi that resided.

Stunned, she snapped her neck back at Voldemort to see him tuck his wand into his pocket looking pissed but not as angry as before.

"There! You happy?"

Even if she could talk then she would've still been speechless.

"I spent decades on that army! Decades!" He raged. "I would've unleashed it too. I would've enslaved the world with them, in two years, tops. Is that good enough for you now? Mom?" He threw his arms at the mess of rocks, face wild with fury. "Will anything I ever do be good enough for you?!"

Furious at her silence, he took over the silencing charm and continued. "I do so much to prove my love for you! I go against every instinct in my soul for you! I don't murder around you! I—I stopped torturing elves for you because I know that upsets you! I do things that revolt my very being for you! Why isn't that enough?! Why don't you love me?!"

Ariel got onto her feet and slowly began to approach him.

"I'm the most powerful dark wizard that ever lived! You should be telling me I'm great every day! You should be spending all day telling me you're proud of me! You should be singing my praises! Literally! You—"

Ariel silenced him by quietly wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head against his chest and whispering, "I'm so proud of you."

He was quiet for a moment, heart racing with the excitement of finally hearing what he was dying to hear, before he remembered who he was and he added, "You should be."

"I am." She lifted her head to unleash a dozen kisses onto his cheek and side of his face, squeezing him tight, telling him, over and over, "I'm so proud of you!"

He stood there trying to look embarrassed. "Mom, stop!" He protested without conviction. But she gave him a few more kisses and another tight embrace. Once she was done, she took a step back and appraised him. Her noseless, pale, gray-skinned, bald, heavily scarred, snake-looking, vicious, cruel, spiteful, narrow-minded, angry, too-smart-for-his-own-good, loving, witty, thoughtful, sweetheart son.

She never loved him more. Not even when he was the cutest orphan in the world.

"I can't believe you did that for me."

"Well yeah... not like I need them." He affirmed, trying to sound like his usual arrogant self. "I can still take over the world on my own."

Ariel sighed softly. She had hoped for too much.

"Sorry, mom. I can't change who I am."

"I know..."

"But...um...you know, I was thinking... it is pretty pathetic that my number one nemesis is still a child. I figured, eh, his birthday's a month from now. He can fight me like a man."

She beamed at him. "I appreciate that Tommy. I know how much you hate the kid."

"I love you more than I hate him. Which is saying something because I really, really, really fucking hate that kid."

Ariel laughed, tears in her eyes. Happy tears. Endeared tears. Relieved tears. "I love you so much, T—" She amended herself. He wasn't Tom. He hadn't been for years. "Lord Voldemort."

* * *

Epilogue:

Narcissa waited a few months after the war ended and a few months more until Snape's injuries healed to visit them. It was nearly six months when she dropped by Spinner's End.

"Narcissa so nice to see you! How are you? How is the family?"

"Better. Especially now that we have a wedding to look forward to."

"I know! You must be excited! Now you'll have two sons!"

"I am," Narcissa said with small but genuine joy. She went quiet for a second then explained, "Draco wanted me to drop an invitation to you two." She handed the envelope bearing her and Severus' names.

"Oh, that's so sweet! Tell him of course we'll be there. Severus is sleeping now but if you want—"

"Oh I don't mean to stay long I have so many errands to run—" With Lucius back in prison and her sister dead she was constantly filling her days with errands. "But there was another thing I wanted to drop off to you."

She pulled a book from the pockets of her robe and handed it to her. It was a copy of an old book, "The Seven Sirens of the Great Seas".

Ariel stared at the book the wind caught in her breath. She opened the cover and saw a stamp that read property of the libraries of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. She was already crying, spotting Tom Riddle's signature on the borrowed/ returned column. Wordlessly Narcissa opened the book to one page specifically which beheld a second envelope which bore the word 'mom'. "I found it when I was decluttering the house."

She tore it open hoping to find a letter, but found instead a golden badge with his former name on it, saying for special achievement, and a single photo. An animated drawing of a mermaid doing a swan dive.

It was all that remained of her son. And though her heart broke knowing he was gone, and from the weight of missing him, she knew it had to be this way. Because her love for him, though unending, could never erase the rage she felt knowing he was this monster running around turning children into orphans, enslaving the masses, and instilling hatred into the hearts of men like Narcissa's husband.

Ariel held the treasures to her chest and wept not out of guilt or shame or regret but out of love. Love for the boy in the cave nobody loved. Love for the young man in the cave who had to destroy himself to prove his self-worth. Love for the evil wizard who surprised her, time and time again, with his capacity to love.

**AUTHOR'S NOTE: I hope this is a better ending than the first one. I know I disappointed a few people with that depressing ending. I'm proud of both regardless because they both feel realistic to the story, or as realistic as a story about Voldemort learning how to love can be.**

**No one asked but this fanfic was heavily inspired by the play, Coriolanus by Shakespeare which has my favorite trope of all time in it, the bad guy who loves their mom trope. There's also a movie out of it, which coincidentally, the dude who plays Voldemort also directed/ acted in.**

**Anyway, here's to moms, who (sometimes) force us into being the better versions of ourselves.**

**And here's to my mom who I missed like crazy during this pandemic.**


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